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PRUDENCE PALFREY. 



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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH 

u 


PRUDENCE PALFREY 


A NOVEL 


THIRTEENTH EDITION 



BOSTON AND NEW TORE: 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
tiitarsiDe CambriDfle 
1886 


o •’ 

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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, 
BY JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 




Exchange 

of Suf*r«me Council AA^ 

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CONTENTS. 


Pag* 


I. 

In which Parson Wibird Hawkins retires from 
Business.7 


II. 

A Parson of the Old School.15 


III. 

Mr. Dent and his Ward.29 


IV. 

Dragons . . .. . 


. 37 


v. 

The Romance of Horseshoe Lane 


. 57 


VI. 

Concerning a Skeleton in a Closet 


. 84 


VII. 

How John Dent made his Pile and lost it 


. 107 


VIII. 


The Parson’s Last Text 


. 134 




VI 


CONTENTS. 


IX. 

A Will, and the Way of it. 150 

X. 

The New Minister. 1G0 

XI. 

A New England Idol. 179 

XII. 

Prue!. 194 

XIII. 

Jonah. 214 

XIY. 

King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid . . . 222 

XY. 

Colonel Peyton Todhunter. 233 

XYI. 

How Prue sang “Auld Robin Gray” .... 255 
XVII. 

How Mr. Dillingham looked out of a Window . . 269 

XVIII. 

A Rivermouth Mystery. 301 





PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


i. 

In which Parson Wibird Hawkins retires from 
Business. 

P ARSON Wibird Hawkins was in trouble. 

The trouble was not of a pecuniary nature, 
for the good man had not only laid up treas¬ 
ures in heaven, but had kept a temporal eye 
on the fluctuations of real estate in River- 
mouth, and was the owner of three or four of 
the nicest houses in Hollyhock Row. Nor was 
his trouble of a domestic nature, whatever it 
once might have been, for Mrs. Wibird Haw¬ 
kins was dead this quarter of a century. Nor 
was it of the kind that sometimes befalls 
too susceptible shepherds, for the parson had 
reached an age when the prettiest of his flock 
might have frisked about him without stirring 
a pulse. 




8 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


His trouble was the trouble of all men who, 
having played their parts nearly if not quite to 
the end, persist in remaining on the stage to 
the exclusion of more fiery young actors who 
have their pieces to speak and their graces to 
show off. These hapless old men do not 
perceive that the scene has been changed 
meanwhile, that twenty or thirty or forty years 
are supposed to have elapsed; it never occurs 
to them that they are not the most present¬ 
able poets, lunatics, and lovers, until the au¬ 
dience rises up and hoots them, gray hairs 
and all, from the foot-lights. 

Parson Wibird Hawkins had been prattling 
innocently to half-averted ears for many a sum¬ 
mer and winter. The parish, as a parish, had 
become tired of old man Hawkins. After fifty 
years he had begun to pall on them. For fifty 
years he had christened them and married them 
and buried them, and held out to them the 
slightest possible hopes of salvation, in accord¬ 
ance with their own grim theology; and now 
they wanted to get rid of him, and he never 
once suspected it, — never suspected it, until 
that day when the deacons waited upon him in 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


9 


his study in the cob webbed old parsonage, and 
suggested the expediency of his retirement 
from active parochial duties. Even then he 
did not take in the full import of the dea¬ 
cons’ communication. Retire from the Lord’s 
vineyard just when his experience was ripest 
and his heart fullest of his Master’s work,-— 
surely they did not mean that! Here he was 
in his prime, as it were; only seventy-nine 
last Thanksgiving. He had come among them 
a young man fresh from the University on 
the Charles, he had given them the enthu¬ 
siasm of his youth and the wisdom of his ma¬ 
ture manhood, and he would, God willing, 
continue to labor with them to the end. He 
would die in the harness. It was his prayer 
that when the Spirit of the Lord came to 
take him away, it might find him preaching 
His word from the pulpit of the Old Brick 
Church. 

a It was very good of you, Deacon Wendell, 
and you, Deacon Twombly,” said the poor old 
parson, wiping the perspiration from his brow 
with a large red silk handkerchief dotted with 
yellow moons; “it was, I must say, very con- 
l* 


10 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


siderate in you to think that I might wish to 
rest awhile after all these years of labor; but 
1 cannot entertain the idea for a moment. 

He had got it into his head that the deacons 
were proposing a vacation to him, were possi¬ 
bly intending to send him to Europe on a tour 
through Palestine, as the Saint Ann’s parish 
had sent the Rev. Josiah Jones the year 
before. 

“ Not,” he went on, “ but I should like to 
visit the Holy Land and behold with my own 
eyes the places made sacred by the footsteps 
of our Saviour, — Jerusalem, and Jordan, and 
the Mount of Olives,— ah! I used to dream 
of that; but my duties held me here then, and 
now I cannot bring myself to desert, even 
temporarily, the flock I have tended so long. 
Why, I know them all by face and name, and 
love them all, down to the latest ewe-lamb.” 

The latest ewe-lamb, by the way, was Deacon 
Twombly’s, and the allusion made him feel 
very uncomfortable indeed. He glanced un¬ 
easily at Deacon Wendell, and Deacon Wen¬ 
dell glanced covertly at him, and they both 
wished that the duty of dismissing Parson 




PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


11 


Hawkins had fallen upon somebody else. But 
the duty was to be performed. The matter 
had been settled, and the new minister all but 
decided on, before the deacons went up to the 
parsonage that afternoon. Even before the 
king was cold, his subjects had in a manner 
thrown up their caps for the next in succes¬ 
sion. All this had not been brought about, 
however, without a struggle. 

Some of the less progressive members of the 
parish clung to the ancient order of things. 
Parson Wibird had been their main-stay in 
life, sickness, and death for full half a cen¬ 
tury ; they had sprung to manhood and grown 
gray under his ministrations, and they held it 
a shame to throw him over now that his voice 
was a little tremulous and his manner not 
quite so vigorous as it was. They acknowl¬ 
edged he was not the man he used to be. He 
wrote no new sermons now; he was turning 
the barrel upside-down, and his latest essay 
dated back as far as 1850. They admitted it 
was something of a slip he made, in resurrect¬ 
ing one of those by-gone sermons, to allude to 
General Jackson as “ our lately deceased Presi- 


12 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


dent”; but then the sermon was a good 
sermon, enough sight better than those sug¬ 
ary discourses without a word of sound doc¬ 
trine in ’em, which they had listened to from 
flibberty-jibberty young ministers from the 
city. There was one of them the other day, 
— the Sabbath Parson Hawkins was ill, — who 
preached all about somebody named Darwin. 
Who was Darwin ? Darwin was n’t one of 
the Apostles. 

“ Fur my part,” said Mr. Wiggins, the 
butcher, “ I ’ll be shot ef 1 don’t stan’ by the 
parson. He buried my Merriali Jane fur me, 
an’ I don’t forgit it nutlier.” 

As it was notorious that the late Maria Jane 
had led Mr. Wiggins something of a dance in 
this life, the unconscious sarcasm of his grati¬ 
tude caused ill-natured people to smile. 

Uncle Jedd, the sexton of the Old Brick 
Church, threatened never to dig another grave 
if they turned off Parson Wibird. Uncle Jedd 
had a loose idea that such a course on His 
part would make it rather embarrassing for 
Rivermouth folks. “ Ther’ is graves an’ tlier’ 
is holes,” Uncle Jedd would say; “ I makes 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


13 


graves, myself, an’ I’m th’ only man in th’ 
county tliet can.” 

Unfortunately the parson’s supporters con¬ 
stituted the minority, and not an influential 
minority. The voice of the parish was for the 
dismissal of the Rev. Wibird Hawkins, and 
dismissed he should be. 

Deacons Wendell and Twombly found their 
mission perplexing. “ We tried to let him 
down easy, of course,” remarked Deacon Zeb 
Twombly, relating the circumstance afterwards 
to a group of eager listeners in Odiorne’s gro¬ 
cery-store ; “ but, Lord bless you, you never 
see an old gentleman so unwillin’ and so hard 
to be let down.” The parson persisted in not 
understanding the drift of the deacons’ propo¬ 
sition until, at last, they were forced to use 
the most explicit language, and in no way 
soften the blow which they suspected rather 
than knew would be a heavy one, however 
adroitly delivered. But when, finally, he was 
made to comprehend the astounding fact that 
the Old Brick Church of Rivermouth actually 
wished him to relinquish his pastorate, then 
the aged clergyman bowed his head, and, wav- 


14 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


mg his hands in a sort of benediction over the 
two deacons, retreated slowly, with his chin 
on his breast, into a little room adjoining the 
study, leaving the pillars of the church stand¬ 
ing rather awkwardly in the middle of the 
apartment. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


15 


II 

A Parson of the Old School. 

E ver since the death of his wife, some 
twenty-five years previous to the events I 
am relating, Parson Hawkins had lived in the 
small house at the foot of Horseshoe Lane. 
The house stood in the middle of a garden 
under the shadow of two towering elms, and 
was so covered by a network of vines, honey¬ 
suckle and Virginia creeper, that the oddities 
of its architecture were not distinctly visible 
from the street. Though the cottage was not 
built by the parson, its interior arrangements 
were as eccentric and inconvenient as if he 
had designed it. It consisted of three or four 
one-story Ls which had apparently been added 
to the main building at various periods, accord¬ 
ing to the whim or exigency of the occupant. 
At the right of the hall, which paused abruptly 
and went up stairs, so to speak, was the par- 


16 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


son’s study; opening from this was a smaller 
chamber, the sanctum sanctorum, lined to the 
ceiling with theological works; and beyond 
this again, though not communicating with it, 
was the room where the parson slept. At the 
left of the hall was the parlor, redolent of ma¬ 
hogany furniture and the branches of pungent 
spruce which choked the wide chimney-place 
summer and winter, for the parlor was seldom 
used. Then came the dining-room, and next 
to that the kitchen. Leading from the former 
were two sleeping-chambers, one occupied by 
Salome Pinder, the parson’s housekeeper. The 
second story of the* main building had been 
left unfinished on the inside. Viewed from 
the garden gate, the zigzag roofs, touched here 
and there with patches of purple and gold 
moss, presented the appearance of a collection 
of military cocked-liats. 

It was altogether a grotesque, ruinous, tum¬ 
bledown place, and people wondered why Par¬ 
son Hawkins should have given up his stately 
house on Pleasant Street and moved to Horse¬ 
shoe Lane, and why he remained there. But 
Salome Pinder understood it. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


17 


“The parson, you see,” said Salome, “is 
gittin’ a leetle near in his old age. He ’pears 
to git nearer an’ nearer ev’ry year. When 
Miss Hawkins was alive, why, bless you! there 
was n’t nothin’ too handsum nor expensive for 
her, an’ I won’t say she was over an’ above 
grateful, for she was n’t; but she’s dead, the 
poor creeter, an’ the best of us lack more ’n 
wings to be angils. The day after the funeral 
the parson says, 4 S’lome,’ says he, 4 we ’ll 
move into the cottage, it’s quite good enough 
for me.’ 4 Nothin’’s too good for you, Parson 
Wibird,’ says I. But he did n’t feel content 
in the great house, an’ it was sort o’ lonely; 
so move we did, to the disapp’intment of 
some, — I don’t mention no names, — who 
thought that mebbe the parson would invite 
’em up to Pleasant Street permanent. P’rhaps 
the Widder Mugridge was the most disap- 
p’inted. But, Lord love you, the parson ain’t 
one of them that is always runnin’ after wim- 
min folks. He’s ben married onst.” 

That was very true, and that Parson Haw¬ 
kins’s matrimonial venture was not altogether 
of an encouraging complexion seems likely; 

B 


18 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


for he declined to repeat the experiment. For 
several years after the translation of Mrs. 
Hawkins, the parish supposed he would take 
another helpmeet, and, in fact, more than one 
seductive cap had been sedately set for him ; 
but the parson had shown himself strangely 
obtuse. He was not an old man at that time, 
but he loved quiet, and perhaps his life had 
not been too tranquil under Mrs. Hawkins’s 
reign. Besides, as Salome said, the parson 
was becoming a little near, not in a general 
way, but in his personal expenses. The poor 
knew how broad and practical his charity was. 
His closeness manifested itself only in matters 
pertaining to his own comfort. He seemed to 
regard himself as an unworthy and designing 
person, who was obtaining food and clothes 
under false pretences from Parson Hawkins. 

These economical tendencies had flowered out 
occasionally in his wife’s time, but had been 
promptly taken up by the roots. Whenever 
his coat showed signs of wear or his hat be¬ 
came a trifle dilapidated, Mrs. Hawkins had 
made him buy a new one. It was whispered 
in and out of the parish that once, when the 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


19 


parson protested against replenishing his ward¬ 
robe, Mrs. Hawkins, who appears to have been 
a person of considerable executive ability, set¬ 
tled the question by putting the parson’s best 
waistcoat on the kitchen fire. I do not vouch 
for the truth of the story, for, though nothing 
occurs in Rivermouth without being known, a 
great many things are known there that never 
occur at all. 

This may have been one of them; but it is 
certain that after Parson Hawkins took up his 
abode in the small house he neglected himself 
frightfully. His linen was always scrupulously 
neat and fresh, for Salome saw to that; but 
he wore his coats until the seams stood out 
pathetically, like the bones of the late Mr. 
Jamison, the Living Skeleton, who used to 
travel with Yan Amburgh’s circus, and must 
have given Death very little trouble to make a 
ghost of him. Of course Salome could not 
put the old gentleman’s coats into the kitchen 
stove when they became shabby. The parson’s 
thriftiness increased with his years, and no 
doubt sorely cramped Salome, who had a New 
England housewife’s appreciation of bountiful 


20 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


living, and to whom a riotous number of mince- 
pies was a necessity at Thanksgiving. She 
uttered no complaint, however, and was quick 
to resent any reflection on her master’s do¬ 
mestic parsimony 

“We could live on the fat of the land if we 
wanted to,” said Salome to Mrs. Waldron, who 
had dropped in of an afternoon to gossip. 
“ The parson he’s a rich man as time goes, 
an’ the pore ougliter be thankful for it. He 
feeds the widder an’ the fatherless, instead of 
a-stuffin’ hisself.” 

“ I wan ter know, now ! ” 

Salome’s homely statement was strictly ac¬ 
curate. However severe the internal economy 
at the small house in Horseshoe Lane, the 
poor were not scrimped. The Widow Pepper- 
ell had her winter fuel regularly; and the two 
Clemmer boys, whose father had leaned against 
a circular saw in the Miantonomoh Mills, knew 
precisely where their winter jackets were com¬ 
ing from. Even wayside tramps — there were 
no professional mendicants in Rivermouth — 
halted instinctively at the modest white gate. 
Doubtless the parson helped many a transpar- 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


21 


ent impostor on liis winding way. There was 
a certain yellow dog that used to walk lame 
up to the scullery door for a bone, and then 
run away with it very nimbly on four legs. 
Sandy Marden’s Skye-terrier was likely enough 
only a fair type of many that shared the par¬ 
son’s bounty. 

He had been a prosperous man. When he 
first came to Rivermouth he purchased a lot 
of land at the west end of the town, as a pas¬ 
ture for a horse which he neglected or forgot 
to buy. The “ minister’s pasture ” became a 
standing joke. It turned out a very excellent 
joke in the end. Several times he was tempted 
to sell the land for less than he gave for it; 
but it had cost him little, and he thought that 
perhaps it might be worth something more by 
and by; so he held on to it. As the town 
grew,, fashion drifted in that direction. Then 
Captain Pendexter put up his haughty Gothic 
mansion at the head of Anchor Street. That 
settled the business. A colony of French-roof 
houses sprang up as if by magic along Jos- 
selyn Avenue, and the “minister’s pasture” 
was about as valuable a piece of property as 


22 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


there was in River mouth. So it came to pass 
that Parson Hawkins was a moderately rich 
man. The people thought the parson was 
pretty shrewd, when perhaps he was only pretty 
lucky: if he had been shrewd he would have 
sold the land long before it was worth any¬ 
thing. Another speculation he entered into at 
this time was not so successful. If the local 
tradition is correct, Colonel Trueworthy Den¬ 
nett’s daughter Dorcas got the best of that 
bargain. 

But for many years now the parson’s lines 
had fallen in pleasant places. The tumult and 
jar of life never reached him among his books 
in the seven-by-nine library in Horseshoe Lane. 
The fateful waves of time and chance that beat 
about the world surged and broke far away 
from the little garden with its bright row of 
sentinel hollyhocks and its annual encamp¬ 
ments of marigolds and nasturtiums. To be 
sure he had had, four or five years before this 
chronicle opens, what he regarded as a griev¬ 
ous affliction. The parish, contrary to his 
wishes, had removed the old pine-wood pulpit 
and replaced it with an ornate new-fangled 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


23 


black-walnut affair thick with grotesque carv¬ 
ings like a heathen idol. The old pulpit was 
hallowed by a hundred associations ; it had 
been built in King George’s time; eminent 
divines whose names are fresh in our colonial 
history had stood under that antiquated sound¬ 
ing-board ; but, after all, what did it matter 
to him whether he expounded the Scriptures 
from pine or black-walnut, so long as he was 
permitted to teach his children the way and 
the life? His annoyance was but transient, and 
he came to look upon it as a vanity and vex¬ 
ation of spirit on his part. But now a real 
trouble had come to him. 

While the two deacons were engaged with 
the parson in the study that May afternoon, 
Salome Pinder moved about the hall and the 
dining-room with strange restlessness. Few 
things went on in the cottage without her cog¬ 
nizance. Not that Salome was given to eaves¬ 
dropping ; but the rooms were contracted, the 
partitions thin, and words spoken in even the 
usual conversational tone had a trick of re¬ 
peating themselves in the adjacent apartments. 
The study door was ajar, and Salome could 


24 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


scarcely help catching scraps of the dialogue 
from time to time. 

Long before the deacons took their depart¬ 
ure she knew very well what had happened. 
In fact, when she saw Deacon Twombly and 
Deacon Wendell coming up the garden walk, 
she felt their visit to be ominous. Salome 
knew of the dissatisfaction that had been 
brewing in the parish for months past. That 
Parson Hawkins never dreamed of it shows 
how unfitted he was to serve longer. The ap¬ 
pearance of the executioners, with warrant and 
bow-string, was the first intimation he had of 
his downfall. 

Salome was appalled by what had taken 
place, though in a degree prepared for it. She 
was so flustered that she neglected to open the 
front door for the retreating deacons, but left 
them, as the parson had done, to find their 
way out as best they might. 

It was some time before she could gather 
strength to cross the hall and look into the 
study. The parson was not there ; he was in 
the little inner room, and the door was locked. 
Salome tried the latch and spoke to him sev- 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


25 


eral times without getting a reply. Then the 
parson told her gently to go away, he was en¬ 
gaged, he would talk with her presently. But 
Salome did not go away; she sunk into a chair 
and sat there with her hands folded listlessly 
in her lap, — a more abject figure, perhaps, 
than the old parson on the other side of the 
door. 

The scent of the lilacs came in at the open 
window, and the leaves of the vines trailing 
over the casement outside made wavering sil¬ 
houettes on the uncarpeted floor of the study. 
The robins sang full-throated in the garden, as 
if there were no such thing in the world as 
care. Salome listened, and wondered vaguely 
at their merriment. 

The afternoon sunlight slipped from the 
eaves and the shadows deepened under the 
great elms. . The phantom leaves at Salome’s 
feet had vanished; the songs of the robins had 
died away to faint and intermittent twitter¬ 
ings, and the early twilight crept into the 
study. Now and then she fancied she heard 
the parson moving in the little room ; he 
seemed to be walking to and fro at intervals, 


2 


26 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


like some poor caged animal. She could not 
tell. 

It was nearly dark when the garden gate 
swung to with a sharp click, and a quick, light 
footstep sounded on the gravel-walk. Salome 
rose hastily from the chair, and reached the 
street-door just as some one stepped upon the 
porch. 

It was a girl of nineteen or twenty, but 
looking younger with her hair blown about her 
brows by the fresh May wind. She held in 
one hand a chip-straw hat which had slipped 
from its place, and with the other was pushing 
back an enviable mass of brown hair, showing a 
serious, pale face, a little flushed at the cheeks 
with walking. It was a face which, passing it 
heedlessly in the street, you would be likely 
to retain in your memory unconsciously. The 
wide gray eyes, capable of great tenderness 
and great haughtiness, would come back to 
you vividly, maybe, years afterwards. The girl 
was not a beauty in the ordinary sense, but 
she had what some one has described as a 
haunting face. Who has not caught a chance 
expression on some face in a crowd, — a lift- 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 27 

ing of the eye, a turn of the lip, an instanta¬ 
neous revelation of strength or weakness, — 
and never forgotten it? I have a fancy, which 
I do not thrust upon the reader, that the per¬ 
son who casts this spell on us would exert a 
marked influence over our destiny if circum¬ 
stance brought us in contact with him or her. 
He^ or she would be our good angel or our 
evil star. 

As the girl stood there now on the porch, 
she looked little enough like playing the part 
of a Fate. With her heavy hair blown in 
clouds over her eyes, she looked rather like a 
Shetland pony. 

“ 0 Miss Prue ! is that you, honey ? ” cried 
Salome. “ Do jest step in an’ speak to the 
parson ; he’s in a peck of trouble.” 

“ I was afraid so, Salome. Where is he ? ” 
asked the girl, pushing open the door of the 
study and seeing it unoccupied. 

“ He ’s locked hisself in the sanctrum,” 
whispered Salome. 

“ Locked himself in ? ” 

“ Yes, an’ there he’s ben ever sence them 
plaguey deacons went away, more ’n two hours.” 



28 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


“ Maybe he will not care to see me just 
now, Salome ? ” 

“ Mebbe, — dunno; but do jest speak a word 
to llim. ,, 

“ If you think I had better ? ” 

“ I do, honey. ,, 

“ How strange, — to lock himself in ! ” 

Then Prudence Palfrey crossed the study, 
and tapped softly on the panel of the inner 
door. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


29 


m. 


Mr. Dent and his Ward. 

ND there we must leave her, with uplifted 



-l_L hand and listening ear, while the reader 
is made acquainted with the personages who 
figure in this little drama, and is put into 
possession of certain facts necessary to a 
clear understanding of it. 

Among those who had been instrumental in 
removing Parson Hawkins from the pastorate 
of the Brick Church was Mr. Ralph Dent, a 
retired brewer of considerable wealth and much 
local influence. He was not, as a general 
thing, deeply concerned in parish affairs; he 
contributed liberally to every worthy charitable 
project, and was always to be seen in his pew 
at the morning service; but it was of com¬ 
paratively small moment to him whether the 
parson’s discourse was long or short, brilliant 
or dull, for he invariably went to sleep. Mr. 


30 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


Dent, for reasons which will appear, did not 
admire Parson Hawkins warmly ; but if, Mr. 
Dent had loved him he would have gone to 
sleep all the same. There are men who can¬ 
not, to save themselves from perdition, keep 
awake in sermon-time. 

So Mr. Dent had no objection to Parson 
Hawkins as a parson ; but he was aware that 
many in the parish had rather strong objec¬ 
tions. The congregation embraced a large 
number of young people, chiefly women, who 
always like their minister sleek and interest¬ 
ing, and they were not content with what had 
satisfied their grandparents. The old pastor 
was visibly breaking up, and a new man was 
wanted. Now it chanced that Mr. Dent, in 
one of his periodical visits to New York, had 
made the acquaintance of a Mr. James Dilling¬ 
ham, a young gentleman of fortune and aris¬ 
tocratic Southern connections, who was travel¬ 
ling in the North for his health. Mr. Dilling¬ 
ham had been educated for the ministry, but, 
owing to ill-health, and perhaps to his passion 
for travel, had never been settled permanently 
over a society. A quick friendship sprung up 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


31 


between the two men, despite the disparity of 
their years, for Mr. Dillingham was not more 
than twenty-eight, and Mr. Dent was well on 
in the second half of that ridiculously brief 
term allotted to moderns. In the course of 
various conversations, Mr. Dillingham became 
interested in Rivermouth, and thought that per¬ 
haps he would visit the lovely New England 
seaport before returning South. He would cer¬ 
tainly do so, if he undertook his proposed pil¬ 
grimage to Quebec. But the Canadian tour, 
and even his return South, were involved in 
considerable uncertainty. The bombardment 
of Fort Sumter by the South-Carolinians had 
brought matters to a crisis ; war was inevita¬ 
ble. Mr. Dillingham’s property was largely 
invested in Western and Northern securities, 
fortunately for him; for, though he was South¬ 
ern born and bred, he had no sympathy with 
the disunionists of his native State. In the 
mean time it might be necessary for him to 
make the North his home. 

It flashed on Mr. Dent that here was the 
very man for the Old Brick Church. Young, 
wealthy, in good social position, and of unusu- 


32 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


ally winning address, lie would be a notable 
acquisition to Rivermouth society. He broached 
the subject indirectly to his friend, who was 
not at first disposed to discuss it as a possi¬ 
bility ; then Mr. Dent urged the matter warm¬ 
ly, and had nearly carried his point, when he 
was obliged to go back to Rivermouth. 

At Rivermouth he laid the case before the 
deacons; they opened a correspondence with 
Mr. Dillingham, which resulted in his agreement 
to preach for them on the last Sunday in May 
following. “ Then,” he wrote, “ we shall be in 
a position to decide on the best course, should 
the vacancy occur to which you allude in your 
letter.” This was satisfactory. Mr. Dilling¬ 
ham was not to be drawn into an inconsider¬ 
ate engagement. But then Mr. Dillingham was 
rich, and not like those poor, drowning clergy¬ 
men, dragged down by large families, ready to 
clutch at such frail straws of salary as River¬ 
mouth could hold out. Upon this it was de¬ 
cided to relieve Parson Hawkins of his charge, 
and take the chances of securing Mr. Dilling¬ 
ham. 

Throughout the matter Mr. Dent had acted 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


33 


on impulse, as the most practical man some¬ 
times will, and had been in no way swayed by 
personal animosity towards Parson Hawkins, 
for he felt none. But when all was said and 
done, a misgiving shot across him. What 
would Prue say ? She all but worshipped the 
old parson. Mr. Dent himself, as I have more 
than intimated, did not worship the parson. 
There had been an occasion, a painful passage 
in Prue’s life, when it seemed to Mr. Dent 
that Parson Hawkins had stood between him 
and the girl. All that was past and nearly 
forgotten now ; but the time had been when 
he thought the minister was alienating Prue’s 
affections from him. 

Prudence Palfrey was Mr. Dent’s ward. His 
guardianship had a certain tinge of romance 
to it, though perhaps no man was less roman¬ 
tic than Mr. Dent. He was a straightforward, 
practical man, naturally amiable and accident¬ 
ally peppery, who had had his living to make, 
and had made it by making beer. A romantic 
brewer would be an anomaly. There is some¬ 
thing essentially prosaic in vats and barrels; 
but this did not restrain Mr. Dent in early life 
2 * c 


•Nonoiasiynrvoe 

‘iioNnoovdns 
3HJ. dO 

Ayvusn 


34 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


from falling in love with Mercy Gardner,—for 
brewers are human, though they may not be 
poetical, — nor is it likely that the brewery, 
which was then a flourishing establishment, 
had anything to do with her refusal to marry 
him. She married his book-keeper, Edward 
Palfrey, and went to the Bermudas, where 
Palfrey had obtained a clerkship in an English 
house. There, after five years, he fell a vic¬ 
tim to an epidemic, and the widow, with her 
three-year-old girl, drifted back to Ri vermouth. 
Dent bore a constant mind, and would proba¬ 
bly have married his old love ; but Mrs. Pal¬ 
frey died suddenly, leaving Prudence and what 
small property there was to his charge. 

He had been faithful to the trust, and had 
had his reward. The pretty ways and laughter 
of the child had been pleasant in his lonely 
home, for he never married. Then the straight, 
slim girl, looking at him with Mercy Gardner’s 
eyes and speaking to him with Mercy Gard¬ 
ner’s voice, had nearly consoled him for all; 
and now the bloom of her womanhood filled 
his house with subtile light and beauty. In 
all his plans Prue’s interest was the end. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


35 


Whatever tenderness there was in his nature 
turned itself towards her. For her sake he 
acquired a knowledge of books, and became an 
insatiable reader, as men always do who take 
to books late in life. He sold out the brew¬ 
ery, not so much because he was tired of it 
as that he did not want the townspeople to be 
able to say that Prudence Palfrey was only 
the brewer’s girl. When she was of age to go 
into society, the best houses in town were open 
to Mr. Dent and his ward, — the Goldstones’, 
the Blydenburghs’, and the Grimses’, — which 
might not have been the case if the old brew¬ 
ery had not faded into the dim and blessed 
past. 

It must be understood that there are circles 
in Rivermouth into which a brewer in the 
present tense could no more penetrate than a 
particularly fat camel could go through the eye 
of a remarkably fine cambric-needle, — charmed 
circles, where the atmosphere is so rarefied 
that after you have got into it the best thing 
you can do, perhaps, is to get out of it again. 
It is not well to analyze the thing closely. It 
is all a mystery. One is pained to find that 


36 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


the most exclusive people have frequently 
passed their early manhood in selling tape or 
West India groceries in homoeopathic quanti¬ 
ties. This is not an immoral thing in itself, 
but it is certainly illogical in these people to 
be so intolerant of those less fortunate folks 
who have not yet disposed of their stock. 
However, this is much too vast and gloomy a 
subject for my narrow canvas. 

Mr. Dent was proud of social position for 
Prue’s sake. There was no girl like her in 
Rockingham County. When he bought Wih 
lowbrook, a spacious house with grounds and 
outbuildings, a mile from the town, she sat at 
the head of his table like a lady as she was, 
for she had honest New England blood in her 
veins. That Prudence was as dear to him as 
if she had been his own daughter, he fully be¬ 
lieved ; but how completely she had curled 
about his heart, like a vine, he did not dis¬ 
cover until his nephew, John Dent, fell in love 
with her and all but married her out of hand. 
This must also be told while Prue is kept 
waiting at the parson’s study door. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


37 


IV, 


Dragons. 


HEN Prudence was turning seventeen,— 



T T that is to say, nearly three years before 
that afternoon in May when she is introduced 
to the reader, — John Dent had come to River- 
mouth. He had recently graduated, with not 
too many honors, and was taking a breathing- 
spell previous to setting out on his adventures 
in the world ; for he had his dragons to over¬ 
come and his spurs to win, like any young 
knight in a legend. Poverty and Inexperience, 
among the rest, are very formidable dragons. 
They slay more young men every year than 
are ever heard of. The stripling knight, with 
his valise neatly packed by the tearful baron¬ 
ess, his mother, sallies forth in a spick-and- 
span new armor from the paternal castle,— 
and, snap ! that is the last of him. Now and 
then one comes back with gold-pieces and dec- 


38 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


orations, but, all! for the numbers that go 
down before the walls of great towns like New 
York and Boston and Chicago ! 

John Dent’s family had formerly lived in 
Rivermouth, where he had lost his mother in 
infancy. At this time his father was asso¬ 
ciated in the proprietorship of the brewery, from 
which he subsequently withdrew to engage in 
some Western railroad enterprise. When Mr. 
Benjamin Dent moved to Illinois, John was a 
mere child; he had not been in Rivermouth 
since; his vacations had been passed with his 
father, and he had only the vaguest memory 
of his childhood’s home. It was a cherished 
memory, nevertheless; for an unwavering affec¬ 
tion for the place of one’s nativity seems to 
be one of the conditions of birth in New Eng¬ 
land. It was during John Dent’s last term in 
college that his father had died, leaving his 
railroad affairs hopelessly complicated. Though 
communication between the two brothers had 
been infrequent of late years, the warmest feel¬ 
ing had existed on both sides, and Mr. Ralph 
Dent was eager with purse and advice to assist 
his nephew in any business or profession he 
might select. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


39 


John Dent was quite undecided what to do 
with himself. When some outlying personal 
debts were paid off there would be enough 
left to keep him afloat a year. Within that 
year of course he must have his plans definitely 
settled. He had come to Rivermouth to talk 
over those plans with his uncle, and a room 
had been provided for him at Willowbrook. 

“ Look here, Prue,” Mr. Dent had said, 
laughingly, the day his nephew was expected, 
“ I won’t have you making eyes at him.” 

“ But I will, though ! ” Prudence had cried, 
glancing back over her shoulder, “ if he is any¬ 
thing like his uncle.” 

But John Dent did not resemble his uncle, 
and Prue did not make eyes at him. She 
found him very agreeable, nevertheless, a tall, 
frank-hearted young fellow with dark hair and 
alert black eyes, — in every way different from 
the abstracted young student her fancy had 
taken the liberty to paint for her. He smoked 
his uncle’s cabanas as if he had been born to 
them, and amused Prue vastly with descrip¬ 
tions of his college life and with the funny 
little profiles of his college chums which he 


40 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


drew on blotting-paper in the library. If he 
could have been examined in caricature, or 
allowed to graduate from the gymnasium, he 
would not have come off so poorly for honors. 

Prudence had rather dreaded the advent of 
the gloomy scholastic, and had been rather 
curious about him also. They had played to' 
gether at a period when Prue was learning to 
walk and John Dent wore pinafores. They 
had not met since then. It was odd for her 
old playfellow to be an utter stranger to her 
now. What sort of man was that little boy 
whom she had lost so long ago in the misty 
fairyland of babyhood ? A solemn young man 
in black, she had fancied. She had pictured 
him prowling about the house and lawn, brood¬ 
ing like the young Prince of Denmark, not on 
psychological subtleties indeed, but on sordid 
questions as to how on earth he was going to 
get his living. How he was going to get his 
living did- not seem to trouble John Dent in 
the least. 

Reading one of Thackeray’s novels in a ham¬ 
mock on the piazza, or strolling in the garden 
after supper, with his cigar glowing here and 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


41 


there among the shrubbery like a panther’s eye, 
he did not appear much appalled by prospec¬ 
tive struggles for existence. The Dents were 
always that way, Mr. Ralph Dent remarked; 
free and easy, with lots of latent energy. Put 
a Dent in a desert, and he would directly build 
some kind of a manufactory. A brewery likely 
enough. 

And indeed there was something under John 
Dent’s careless manner which seemed to give 
the assurance that when the time arrived he 
would overthrow the wicked giants and slay 
the enchanted dragons with neatness and de¬ 
spatch, like a brave modern knight in an Eng¬ 
lish walking-coat and a mauve silk neckerchief 
drawn through an amethyst ring. Uncle Ralph 
thought there was a good deal to the boy,— 
and so did Prue. 

He was superior to any young man she had 
ever seen. She had seen few, to be sure, for 
Rivermouth is a sterile spot in which to pick 
up a sustenance, and her young male eagles 
generally fly from the nest as soon as they are 
fledged, some seaward and others to the neigh¬ 
boring inland cities. They are mostly sickly 


42 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


eagles that are left. So Prudence had encoun¬ 
tered few young men in her time, and those 
she had not liked; but she did like John Dent. 

John Dent had come to Ri vermouth bearing 
about his person some concealed wounds in¬ 
flicted by the eldest daughter of his Greek pro¬ 
fessor ; he had, in fact, been “ stabbed with a 
white wench’s black eye, shot through the ear 
with a love-song,” as Mercutio phrases it; but 
before ten days were gone at Willowbrook 
these wounds had somehow healed over, leaving 
scarcely a cicatrice on his memory. 

Given a country-house, with a lawn and a 
pine grove, and two young people with noth¬ 
ing in the world to do, — let the season be 
springtime or winter, — and it requires no wiz¬ 
ard to tell the result. Prue, with her genuine 
fresh nature and trim figure and rich hair and 
gray eyes, was easy to like, and very much 
easier to love. I am not trying to find rea¬ 
sons for these young people. If people who 
pair were obliged to have good reasons for pair¬ 
ing, there would be a falling off in the census. 

It came to pass, then, at the end of four 
weeks, that John Dent found himself thinking 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


43 


night and day of his uncle’s ward. He knew 
it was a hopeless thing from the start. He 
was twenty-three, penniless, and without a pro¬ 
fession. Nothing was less tenable than the 
idea that his uncle would permit Prudence to 
engage herself to a man who might not be in 
a position these five years to give her a home. 
Then as to Prudence herself, he had no 
grounds for assuming that she cared for him. 
She had been very frank and pleasant, as was 
permissible to the nephew of her guardian; her 
conduct had been from the beginning without 
a shadow of coquetry. She had made no eyes 
at him. 

Prudence would not have been a woman and 
eighteen if she had not seen somewhat how 
matters were going with the young gentleman. 
She did not love him, as yet; but she liked 
him more than any one she had ever known. 
She knew as well as he that anything beyond 
friendship between them would be unfortunate. 
She determined to afford him no opportunity to 
speak to her of love, if he were so unwise. 
She would keep him at such a distance as 
would render it difficult for him to indulge in 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


44 

the slightest sentiment with her. Prue had 
passed to her eighteenth birthday without so 
much as a flirtation; but she at once set to 
work managing John Dent with the cool skill 
of a seaside belle in her second season. It is 
so a young duck takes to water. 

There were no moonlight walks on the lawn 
any more; but it fell out so naturally that 
John Dent saw no diplomacy in it. Household 
duties, which she could have no hand in con¬ 
juring, rose up between them and the pine 
grove. People from the town, very stupid 
people, dropped into the drawing-room of an 
evening, or his uncle failed to drop out. When 
they were alone together, and frequently when 
Mr. Dent was present, Prudence would rally 
the young man about the professor’s daughter 
whom he had mentioned incidentally early in 
his visit. She suspected a tenderness in that 
direction, and in handling the subject devel¬ 
oped powers of sarcasm quite surprising to her¬ 
self. She was full of liveliness those days. 

John Dent was not lively now; he was grad¬ 
ually merging into that saturnine and melan¬ 
choly-eyed student whom Prue had so dreaded. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


45 


Mr. Ralph Dent was struck by this phenom¬ 
enon. It seemed to him latterly that his ward 
laughed too much and his nephew not enough. 
It had been the other way. Mr. Dent was, as 
I have said, a practical man, except in this, 
that he expected other people to be practical. 
He did not dream that his nephew would have 
the audacity to fall in love with Prue. But 
the change that had come over the two gave 
Mr. Dent a twinge of uneasiness. Perhaps he 
had not been wholly wise in having John Dent 
at Willowbrook. 

The more he reflected on Prue’s high spirits 
and his nephew’s sudden low ones, the less he 
admired it. If there had been any nonsense 
between them, he would put a stop to it before 
it went any further. 

Running through the Willowbrook grounds 
was a winding rivulet spanned by a rustic 
bridge, at the farther end of which, under a 
clump of willows, stood a summer-house, — an 
octagon-shaped piece of lattice-work with four 
gilt balls suspended from a little blue spire on 
the roof: a Yankee’s idea of a pagoda. Here 
John Dent was thoughtfully smoking a cigar 


46 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


one morning when he saw his uncle cross the 
birch-bark bridge and come towards him. Mr. 
Dent stepped into the summer-house, seated 
himself opposite the young man, took out his 
cigar-case, and went directly to the business in 
hand. 

“ Jack,” said Mr. Dent, “ I hope you have n’t 
been talking any nonsense to Prue.” 

“ I don’t think I understand you,” said 
Jack, with a little start. “ I have n’t, to my 
knowledge, been talking any nonsense to 
her.” 

“ For the last week or so you have not 
seemed like yourself, and I fancied that per¬ 
haps something had happened between you and 
Prue, ■—a little tiff maybe.” 

“ Nothing in the world, sir.” 

Mr. Dent, like Hamlet, wanted something 
“ more relative than this.” 

“ You are sure you have not been making 
love to her, Jack ? ” 

“ I have certainly not been making love to 
Miss Palfrey, if that is what you mean.” 

Mr. Dent drew a breath of relief. If his 
nephew had one trait stronger than another, it 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


47 


was truthfulness. Mr. Dent was satisfied that 
no mischief had been done so far, and he in¬ 
tended to preclude the possibility of mischief. 
u How stupid of me,” he reflected, “ to put the 
notion into the fellow’s head! ” He would 
cover his maladroit move by getting his nephew 
into a New York banking-house or an insur¬ 
ance office at once. The sooner Jack made a 
start in life the better. Mr. Dent bit off the 
end of his cigar, and, taking a light from the 
young man, said, “ Of course, Jack, I did n’t 
seriously think you had.” 

With this he rose and was about to leave 
the summer-house. 

“ Are you going to town, uncle ? ” inquired 
John Dent, looking up. 

“ Yes.” 

“ I ’ll walk a bit of the way with you, if 
you like.” 

“ Certainly, Jack.” 

As the garden gate closed on uncle and 
nephew, Prudence looked out of the bay-window 
over the hall door, and her busy, intelligent 
needle came to a dead halt half-way through a 
piece of cambric muslin. She was aware that 


48 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


her guardian was going to town ; but it was 
not one of John Dent’s habits to take long 
walks with his uncle. Prue pondered the cir¬ 
cumstance for a minute or so, and then the 
needle went on again as busily as before. 

“ Uncle Ralph,” said John Dent, as they 
reached a rise of ground overlooking the spires 
and gables of Rivermouth and the picturesque 
harbor, where a man-of-war lay at anchor with 
its masts and spars black against the spark¬ 
ling atmosphere, “ I had half resolved to say 
something to you this morning, but after your 
question in the summer-house I feel it my duty 
to say it.” 

“ What is that, Jack ? ” 

“ I told you I had not been making love to 
Miss Palfrey, but I am bound to tell you that 
I love her all the same.” 

“ What! why, I never heard of such mad¬ 
ness ! ” And Mr. Dent stopped short in the 
middle of the road. 

“ I did n’t suppose it would meet with your 
approval, sir.” 

“ My approval ? I tell you I never heard of 
such insanity! ” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


49 


“ I know it is unfortunate,” said John Dent, 
humbly; “ but there are things which no man 
can help.” 

“ But a man should help falling in love with 
a girl when he is not able to provide birdseed 
for a canary.” 

“The birdseed will come in good time; it 
always does.” 

Mr. Dent’s glance, by the merest accident, 
rested on the red-brick Almshouse which loomed 
up on the left. John Dent followed his glance, 
and colored. 

“Do you expect a young woman to waste 
the bloom of her life waiting for you, and 
finally go with you over there ? ” 

“ The girl who will not wait a year or two, 
or ten years, for the man she loves, is not 
worth working for,” said John Dent, nettled. 

Then Mr. Dent cursed himself for his blind¬ 
ness in bringing these two together. 

“ And Prue loves you ? ” he gasped. 

“ I did n’t say that, sir.” 

“ What in the devil did you say, then ? ” 

“ I said I loved her. I think she does n’t 
care a straw for me.” 


3 


D 


50 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


“ But you spoke of her waiting for you a 
year or two.” 

“ That was merely a supposititious case.” 

“ Have you hinted anything of this to Prue ? ” 

“No, sir.” 

“ Then I depend on your honor not to. I 
won’t have it! I won’t have it! ” And Mr. 
Dent stood there quite white with anger. 

“You will bear in mind, Uncle Ralph, that 
I need not have told you this.” 

“ That would have been dishonorable.” 

“ It would have been dishonorable, sir ; and 
so I came to you directly, without breathing a 
word to Miss Palfrey. I did not forget I was 
under your roof.” 

Certainly John Dent had not been dishonor¬ 
able, however mad. Mr. Dent knew that his 
nephew was wrong in falling in love with his 
ward, and that he himself was right in being 
indignant; yet he was conscious that his young 
kinsman had in a fashion disarmed him. 

“ This is exceedingly awkward,” he said, 
after a silence. “ I was very glad to have 
you at Willowbrook, but with this extraordi¬ 
nary avowal — ” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


51 


John Dent interrupted him: “ Of course my 
visit at an end, I knew that. I shall leave 
to-day.” 

“ What are your plans ? ” 

“ I have none, that is, nothing definite.’* 

“I mean, where are you going?” 
u 0, I shall take a room somewhere in the 
town for the present.” 

Mr. Dent did not like that. The nice sense 
of honor which had sealed the young man’s 
lips while beneath the avuncular roof might 
take wing under different circumstances. Riv- 
ermoutli was a strong strategical position from 
which to lay siege to Willowbrook. Mr. Dent 
did not like that at all. 

u Why waste your time in Rivermouth ? There 
is no opening for you there. Why not go to 
Boston, or, better still, to New York ” (or 
to Jericho, Mr. Dent interpolated mentally), 
“ where there are countless chances for a 
young man like you ? ” 

“ I can live more economically in the town. 
Besides, I do not intend to settle in any of 
our Eastern cities. I shall go to some new 
country where there are wider and less crowd- 


52 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


ed fields for enterprise, where fortunes are 
made rapidly. I wish to make my pile at 
once.” 

“ Quite a unique case,” Mr. Dent could not 
refrain from remarking. 

“ Then,” continued John Dent, shedding the 
sarcasm placidly, “ I shall come back and ask 
Miss Palfrey to be my wife, if her heart and 
hand are free.” 

“You will do me the favor to delay the 
question until you come back,” cried Mr. Dent, 
whose wrath was fanned into flame again. 
“ If you insist on idling about Pi vermouth, I 
insist on your promise that you will not ex¬ 
plain your views to Miss Palfrey.” 

“ I will not make any promises,” returned 
John Dent, “ because I have an unfortunate 
habit of keeping them.” 

Was it possible that Prue was tangled, even 
ever so slightly, in the meshes of the same net 
that had caught this luckless devil-fish? After 
his nephew’s confession, Mr. Dent was pre¬ 
pared for almost anything. 

Mr. Dent said: “ But unless you do give 
me some such assurance, I shall be constrained 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


63 


to forbid your visits to the house, and that 
would cause people to talk.” 

u Even with that alternative I cannot make 
you any promise. To be candid, I have n’t at 
this moment the faintest intention of telling 
Miss Palfrey what my sentiments are. It is 
not likely I shall see her again, since you have 
walled up the doors of Willowbrook,” he added, 
with a smile. “ Uncle Ralph, let us talk 
sense.” 

“ Thanks for the compliment implied.” 

“ Don’t mention it,” said Jack, politely. 

“ Look here,” said Mr. Dent, resting his 
hand on his young kinsman’s shoulder, “ I do 
not want to shut my doors on you. It annoys 
me beyond measure to have my brother Ben’s 
boy flying in the face of reason in this way, 
and setting himself up in antagonism to me, 
his best friend. Come, now, Jack, don’t be a 
simpleton. Go to New York, look up some 
business or profession to your taste, and you 
shall have any capital you require, if you will 
give over this foolishness about Prue.” 

“ I could not do it, Uncle Ralph. I love 
her.” 


54 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


He had said that before quietly enough. The 
words were spoken passionately this time, and 
they went through Mr. Dent’s heart with in¬ 
explicable sharpness. 

“ I love her, and I should despise myself if 
I could be bought. All the chances are against 
me, I know; but if I cannot have her, I can 
at least try to be worthy of her.” 

“ Stuff and nonsense! How many girls have 
you fallen in love with before now ? ” 

“ Seven or eight, first and last, as nearly as 
I can remember,” replied young Dent, can¬ 
didly ; “ but there was no Prudence Palfrey 

among them. I think that when a man loves 
a girl like her, he loves but once.” 

“ All this comes of your verse-writing and 
moonshine. I don’t know where you got them 
from. Your father was a plain, practical man, 
and kept his head cool. When I was a young 
fellow — ” 

“ You fell in love with Mercy Gardner,” 
cried John Dent, “ and never loved any but 
her.” 

Mr. Dent winced a little as he parried the 
thrust. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


55 


“ But I could not have her, and I made the 
best of it, like a sensible man. You cannot 
have her daughter, and you are making the 
worst of it, like an obstinate fellow.” 

“ But I am not sure I cannot have the 
daughter — some time.” 

“ I tell you so.” 

John Dent decapitated a thistle with one 
impatient stroke of his cane. Off came his 
uncle’s head — by proxy! 

“ When Miss Palfrey tells me with her own • 
lips to go about my business, then it will be 
time enough for me to draw on those stores 
of philosophy and hard common-sense which 
are supposed to be handed down in the Dent 
family.” 

Mr. Dent’s anger flashed out at that, and it 
must be owned his nephew was exasperating. 

“ I command you never to speak to her of 
this! ” 

“ But I must, one of these days.” 

“You refuse positively to quit Bivermouth ? ” 

“ At present I do.” 

“ And you will make no promise relative to 
Miss Palfrey ? ” 


B6 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


“ I cannot do that, either, sir.” 

“ Then you cannot call at the house, you 
know,” cries Mr. Dent. “ I forbid you to 
speak to her when you meet her, on the street 
or elsewhere, and I ’ll have nothing to do with 
you from this out! ” 

And Mr. Dent turned on his heel and walked 
rapidly down the road in the direction of Wil- 
lowbrook, forgetful of those two ounces and a 
half of scarlet Saxony wool which he had been 
commissioned by Prue to purchase at River- 
mouth. 

“ ‘ How poor are they that have not pa¬ 
tience ’! ” said the young man to himself; 
then he added, a second after, “ How poor are 
they that have not prudence! ” probably mean¬ 
ing Prudence Palfrey. 

John Dent looked at his cigar. It had gone 
out. He threw the stump among some bar¬ 
berry-bushes by the stone-wall, and set his 
face towards the town. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


57 


V. 

The Eomance of Horseshoe Lane. 

J OHN DENT did not return to Willowbrook 
to dinner. The meal was passed in un¬ 
wonted silence. Mr. Dent was preoccupied, 
and Prudence was conscious of something in 
the atmosphere inimical to conversation. Once 
or twice her guardian looked up from his plate 
as if to address her, and then seemed to 
change his mind. 

“ Where is Cousin John ? ” at length asked 
Prudence, setting the almonds and raisins 
nearer to Mr. Dent. 

u 0, by the way, I forgot to say he was 
not coming to dinner! He he dines in 
town.” 

“ At the Blydenburghs’ ? ” 

There was a certain Miss Veronica Blyden- 
burgli, and a very pretty girl, let me tell you. 

“ I don’t know. How should I know ? ” 
replied Mr. Dent, crisply. 

3 * 


58 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


“Will he return to tea ? ” ventured Pru¬ 
dence, after a pause. 

“ I don’t think he will,” Mr. Dent said, 
pushing back his chair. “ In fact, I do not 
think he will return here at all; he has some 
matters in town requiring his attention for a 
few days, and then he is off. He sent good- 
by to you,” added Mr. Dent, committing a lit¬ 
tle amiable perjury in the attempt to rob his 
nephew’s sudden departure of its brusqueness. 

Then Mr. Dent walked out of the dining¬ 
room. 

“ Not coming back at all, and sent good-by 
to me ? ” said Prudence to herself. “ As¬ 
suredly, Cousin John has not strained many 
points to be polite, after being our guest for 
six weeks.” 

Then she recalled the walk which Cousin 
‘John had taken with his uncle in the morn¬ 
ing; she put this and that together, and be< 
came contemplative. 

As Prudence and her guardian were sitting 
on the piazza an hour or two later, Clem 
Hoyt, the local Mercury and expressman, drove 
up to the gate with an order for Mr. J. Dent’s 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


59 


trunk, and an unsealed note for Miss Palfrey 
which Mr. Dent handed to her with an inde¬ 
scribable grimace. 

The writer expressed his regret on not be¬ 
ing able to say his adieux to her in person ; 
he had been called away unexpectedly; he 
would never forget her kindness to him dur¬ 
ing the past six weeks, but would always be 
her very faithful cousin John Dent. That was 
all. 

Prudence turned the paper over and over, 
and upside down, to see if a postscript had 
not escaped her; but that was the whole of it. 
It was almost as telegrammatic as the royal 
epistle to the queen in “ Ruy Bias,” — Madam , 
the wind is high , and I have killed six wolves. 

“ Uncle Ralph,” said Prue, folding up the 
note and slipping it back into the envelope, 
“ I know that something unpleasant has hap¬ 
pened.” 

“ What does he say ? ” 

“ He ? — nothing. But something has hap¬ 
pened.” 

Mr. Dent tilted back his chair and made no 
rejoinder. 


60 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


“ What is it ? Have you quarrelled with 
him ? ” 

“ We did have a misunderstanding.” 

“ What about, uncle ? ” 

“ About money matters chiefly.” 

“ If it was all about money,” said Prudence, 
“ I have no business to ask questions.” 

“ The boy made a fool of himself generally,” 
returned Mr. Dent incautiously. 

“ Then it was not money chiefly ? ” said 
Prudence, walking up to him and looking into 
his eyes. “ Uncle Ralph, was it anything con¬ 
nected with me?” 

“ Prue, my dear, I would rather not discuss 
the subject.” 

“ But, uncle, if it was about me, I ought to 
know it. It would make me very unhappy to 
be the cause of dissension between you and 
your nephew, and not know what I have done. I 
might keep on doing it all the time, you know.” 

“ You have n’t done anything, child; it is 
Jack’s doing.” 

“ What is Jack’s doing ? ” 

“ Since you will have it, I suppose I must 
tell you.” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


61 


But Mr. Dent was at a loss how to tell her, 
and hesitated. Should he treat the affair 
lightly or seriously ? The idea of Prue hav¬ 
ing a lover was both comical and alarming to 
him. 

“Well, what did Cousin John do?” 

“ He did me the honor, this morning, to say 
that he was in love with you, — did you ever 
hear anything so absurd ? ” 

Prudence opened her eyes wide. 

“ Well ? ” 

“ Well ? Well, I thought it rather absurd 
myself.” 

“ That anybody should love me ? ” said Prue, 
slyly. 

“ Not at all; but that Jack should allow 
himself to be interested in any one under the 
circumstances. I pointed out to him the mis¬ 
take of his even dreaming of marriage in his 
present position. What folly ! Setting you en¬ 
tirely aside, what could Jack do with a wife ? 
She would be a millstone tied to his neck. Of 
course I refused to sanction his insanity, and 
offered to establish him in business if he 
would behave himself sensibly.” 


62 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


u That is, if he would n’t love anybody ? ” 

“ Precisely.” 

“ And then what did he say ? ” asked Pru¬ 
dence, leaning on her guardian’s arm persua¬ 
sively, and smiling up in his face. 

Mr. Dent was pleased to see that his ward 
took the matter with so much composure, and 
felt that the subject was one which could be 
treated best from a facetious point of view. 

“ He said he’d see me — no, he did not say 
that exactly; but he meant it. He declared 
he would go off somewhere and make his for¬ 
tune in a few weeks, or hours, I forget which, 
and then come back and marry you — pretty 
much without consulting anybody’s taste but 
his own. Upon my word, Prue, I think there 
is something wrong with his brain. He re¬ 
fused my advice and assistance point-blank.” 

“ Then you quarrelled ? ” 

“ Yes, I suppose we quarrelled. He was as 
unreasonable as a lunatic. He cut off my 
head,” said Mr. Dent, grimly. 

“ Cut off — your head ? ” 

“ Substantially. He snipped off the top of a 
thistle with his walking-stick, and looked me 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


63 


straight in the eye, as much as to say, * Con¬ 
sider your head off! ’ ” 

“ Oh ! ” cried Prue, faintly. “ But how did 
it end ? ” 

“ If ended by my forbidding him to come to 
the house.” 

Prue’s hand slipped from her guardian’s 
shoulder with a movement like lightning. 

“ You turned him out of doors! ” 

“ Well, perhaps that is stating it rather 
strongly.” 

“ It was generous in him not to speak of his 
love to me, and brave of him to go to you, — 
and you have turned him out of doors! ” and 
Prue’s eyes flashed curiously. 

Now it was not, perhaps, a frightful thing 
in itself, Prue’s eyes flashing; but since she 
was a baby, when her eyes could not flash, 
she had never given Mr. Dent such a look, 
and it all but withered him. It was so sudden 
and unlike her! 

“ Why, Prue! ” he managed to cry, “ you 
don’t mean to say you love the fellow! ” 

“ I do love him! ” cried Prudence, with red 
cheeks. “ I did n’t love him, but you have 


64 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


made me love him! I have beggared him, and 
made him wretched besides, and I ’d marry 
him to-morrow if lie’d ask me! ” 

u Gracious heaven, Prue! what else could I 
do?” 

“ You ought to have sent him to me ! ” 
Struck by this reply into “ amazement and 
admiration,” Mr. Dent found no words at his 
command as the girl glided by him and into 
the house. 

“ And Prue loves him,” he said, in a subdued 
voice, leaning against the balustrade heavily, 
like a wounded man, “ my Prue ! ” 

Between his nephew and his ward Mr. Ralph 
Dent had had a hard day of it. 

If John Dent could have caught only an 
echo of Prudence Palfrey’s words as she swept 
by her guardian that afternoon, he would not 
have been the forlorn creature he was, over 
there in Rivermouth, trying to read musty 
books on knotty doctrinal points, borrowed 
from Parson Hawkins’s library, but forever 
leaving them to wander down to points on the 
river, where was afforded what the poet Gray 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


65 


would have called “ a distant prospect ” of 
Willowbrook chimneys. 

A week had passed since the rupture with 
his uncle, and Dent’s plans were matured. He 
had fallen in with a brother knight-errant, a 
Rivermouth boy and quondam schoolmate of 
his, and the two had agreed to set forth to¬ 
gether in search of fortune. Their plan was 
to go to San Francisco overland, and, failing 
of adventures there, to push on to the mining 
districts. It was a mad idea, and John Dent’s 
own. The day had long gone by when great 
nuggets were unearthed by private enterprise 
in California; but he had drawn the notion 
into his brain that his fortune was to be made 
at the mines. How or when the fancy first 
took possession of him I cannot say. Per¬ 
haps the accounts of the Australian gold-fields, 
then a comparatively recent discovery, had 
something to do with it; perhaps it was born 
solely of his necessity. He wanted money, he 
wanted a large quantity, and he wanted it im¬ 
mediately. A gold-mine seemed to simplify the 
matter. To bring it down to a fine point, it 
was a gold-mine he wanted. He brooded over 


66 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


the subject until it became a fixed fact in his 
mind that there was a huge yellow nugget 
waiting for him somewhere, hidden in the 
emerald side of a mountain or lying in the 
bed of some pebbly stream among the gulches. 
iEons and aeons ago Nature had secreted it in 
her bounteous bosom to lavish it lovingly on 
some man adventurous and faithful above the 
rest. The Golden Fleece at Colchis was not 
more real to Jason and his crew than this 
nugget finally became to John Dent. He was 
a poet in those days. Every man is a poet at 
some period of his life, if only for half an 
hour. 

In Parson Hawkins’s library was a work on 
metallography, together with a certain history 
of the gold-fever in the early days of Cali¬ 
fornia : young Dent had pored over these vol¬ 
umes as Cervantes’s hero pored over the books 
on chivalry, until his brain was a little touched; 
and also like the simple gentleman of La 
Mancha, John Dent had not been long in find¬ 
ing a simpler soul to inoculate with his mad¬ 
ness, — to wit, Deacon Twombly’s son Joe. 

Their preparations for the journey were com- 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


67 


pleted, and Joseph Twombly, set on fire by his 
comrade’s enthusiasm, was burning to be gone; 
but John Dent lingered irresolutely day after 
day in the old town by the river. An uncon¬ 
querable longing had grown up in his heart to 
say good by to Prudence Palfrey. 

In the mean while the days were passing 
tranquilly but not happily at Willowbrook. 

Mr. Dent was silent and gloomy, and Pru¬ 
dence had lost her high spirits. She had also 
lost a rose or two from her cheek, but they 
came back impetuously whenever she thought 
of the confession she had made to her guar¬ 
dian. It had been almost as much a surprise 
to herself as to him. John Dent’s name had 
not been breathed by either since that after¬ 
noon. Whether he was still at Rivermouth or 
not, neither knew. Both had cast a hasty 
glance over the congregation, on entering the 
church the succeeding Sunday, one half dread¬ 
ing and the other half hoping he might be 
there; but John Dent, seated in the gallery 
behind the choir, had eluded them. He sat 
with his eyes riveted on the back of Prue’s 
best bonnet, and it had not done the young 
man any appreciable good. 


68 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


As matters stood Prudence could not, and 
Mr. Dent did not, go to Rivermouth. Having 
declared to him that she loved a man who had 
not asked her for her love, she had cut herself 
off from the town while young Dent remained 
there. This involved a serious deprivation to 
Prue, for she longed to carry her trouble to 
the good old parson in Horseshoe Lane, who 
had been her counsellor and comforter in all 
her tribulations as far back as she could re¬ 
member. 

Towards the end of the second week Pru¬ 
dence became restless. No doubt John Dent 
had quitted the place long ago. And suppose 
he had not ? suppose he had decided to live 
there? Was she to shut herself up forever like 
a nun ? There were calls owing in town, at the 
Blydenburghs’ and elsewhere. The whole rou¬ 
tine and pleasure of life was not to be inter¬ 
rupted because her uncle had quarrelled with 
his nephew. 

At the breakfast-table she said, “I am go¬ 
ing to town this morning, uncle.” 

“ Will you have the phaeton ? ” asked Mr. 
Dent, but not with effusion, as the French 
say. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


69 


“ I think I shall walk, for the sake of the 
exercise.” 

“But, Prue — ” 

“If you infer that I am going to town to 
hunt up a young man who ran away from 
me,” Prudence broke out with a singular dash 
of impatience, “ I will stay at home.” 

“ I do not infer anything of the kind,” Mr. 
Dent answered. “ I was simply going to say 
you had better ride ; it is dusty walking.” 

Prudence bit her lip. 

“ I want you to be your own sensible self, 
Prue. You are very strange recently. Many 
a time you must have felt the lack of a gen¬ 
tler hand than mine to guide you. You never 
needed guidance more than now. I wish I 
knew what wise words Mercy would speak to 
her child, if she were alive.” 

Prudence rose from her chair and went over 
to his side. 

“ If my mother were here, I think she would 
tell me to ask your forgiveness for all the an¬ 
noyance I have been to you from the time I 
was a baby until now. I am very sorry for 
the way I spoke the other day. I could not 


70 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


help Hiking John Dent, but I need n’t have 
been a fierce wolf about it, need I ? ” 

Mr. Dent smiled at the fierce wolf, but he 
could not help recognizing the appositeness of 
simile. It was the first time he had smiled in 
two weeks, and it was to Prudence like a 
gleam of pure sunshine after dog-days. So the 
cloud between them broke, floated off a little 
way, and halted; for life to these two was 
never to be just what it had been. 

“ If you don’t wish me to go — ” said Prue, 
meekly. 

** But I do,” Mr. Dent answered. Then he 
made a forlorn effort to be merry, and bade 
her hurry off to town and get married, and 
come back again as soon as possible. 

And Prue said she would. She resolved, 
however, that if by any chance John Dent was 
still in Pi vermouth, and if by any greater 
chance she encountered him, — and nothing 
was more remote from her design,—she would 
behave with faultless discretion. She would 
not marry him to-morrow, now, if he asked 
her ; she loved him, but her love should never 
be a millstone about his neck. That phrase of 
her guardian’s had sunk into her mind. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


71 


As she drew near the town, and saw the 
roof-tops and spires taking sharper outlines 
against the delicate lilac sky, her pulse quick¬ 
ened. What if she were to meet him on the 
bridge, or run against him suddenly at a street 
corner ? Would his conceit lead him to sup¬ 
pose she was searching for him, or even wished 
to meet him ? 

The thought sent the blood blooming up to 
her temples, and she was half inclined to turn 
back. Then, with a little imperious toss of the 
head, like a spirited pony taking the bit be¬ 
tween its teeth, she went on. 

Prudence avoided the main thoroughfares, 
and, by a circuitous route through Pickering’s 
Court, reached the gate of the parsonage with¬ 
out accident. She closed the gate behind her 
carefully, with a dim apprehension that if she 
let it swing to with a bang, John Dent, walk¬ 
ing somewhere a mile or two away, might hear 
the click of the latch and be down on her. 
An urchin passing the house at that instant 
gave a shrill whistle through his fingers, in 
facile imitation of a steam-engine, and the 
strength went quite out of Prue’s knees. Smil- 


72 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


ing at lier own nervousness she ran up the 
gravelled walk. 

At the farther end of the piazza, completely 
screened by vines from the street, sat John 
Bent, with corrugated brow, reading Adam 
Smith on “ The Wealth of Nations.” 

As Prudence stretched out her hand towards 
the knocker, the young man looked up wearily 
from the book and saw her, and then her eyes 
fell upon him. 

“I — I thought you had gone ! ” stammered 
Prudence, grasping at the flat-nosed brass 
cherub for support. 

“ No, I have n’t gone yet,” replied John 
Dent, with beaming countenance. 

“ So I see,” said Prue, recovering herself. 

“ I hated to go without saying good by to 
you, and of course I could not come to the 
house.” 

“ Of course not,” said Prue. 

“ And so I waited.” 

“Waited for me to come to you!” cried 
Prue, flushing. “ You might have waited a 
long time if I had suspected it.” 

“ And you would n’t have come ? ” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


73 , 


“ No.” 

A No kept on ice for a twelvemonth could 
not have been colder than that. 

“ Are you angry with me, too ? ” 

“ I am very angry with you. You were en¬ 
tirely in the wrong to quarrel with your uncle, 
John Dent; he was your only friend.” 

“ He left me no choice, you see. I went to 
him in great trouble and uncertainty, wanting 
kindly advice, and he treated me harshly, as I 
think. Unless he has told you why we fell 
out, I shall say nothing about it. Did he tell 
you, Prue?” 

“ Yes, he told me,” said Prudence, slowly. 

“ What could I do but go to him ? ” 

“ I was very sorry it happened.” 

“ What if I had come to you instead ? ” 

“ I should have been still more sorry.” 

“Then after all,” said John Dent, “it seems 
that I chose the lesser evil. There is some 
small merit in that. But the mischief is done, 
— the cat has eaten the canary, — and the only 
atonement I can make is to take myself off as 
soon as may be. I cannot tell you what a 
comfort it is to see you once more. I have 

4 


74 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


spent two or three hours here every day, hoping 
some lucky chance would bring you. Parson 
Wibird, you know, was my father’s most inti¬ 
mate friend when our family lived in the town, 
and I didn’t seem to have any one nearer to 
me; so I’ve given him a good deal of my 
unpleasant society. I have been reading the 
parson’s theological works,” he went on with 
a dreary air, “ and some books on mining, and 
I’m pretty well up on the future state and 
geology.” 

It was all Prudence could do not to laugh. 

“ But the minutes hung on my hands, I can 
tell you. About the wretcliedest hours of my 
life I have passed on that little pine seat 
yonder.” 

Many a time afterwards Prudence recalled 
these words, sitting disconsolately herself on 
that same green bench under the vines. 

“ All that is past, now you are here; but I 
don’t believe I could have stood it another 
week, even with the hope of seeing you at the 
end of it. Cousin Prue, there are several 
things I want to say to you; I hardly know 
how to say them. May I try ? ” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


75 


“ That depends on what they are,” returned 
Prudence. “ There are some things which you 
should not say to me.” 

“ I may tell you I love you ? ” 

“ No, you must not tell me that.” 

“ I need not, you mean. Uncle Ralph has 
saved me the confusion of confession. If he 
had trusted me fully I believe I should have 
gone away with the word unspoken. I don’t 
see the harm of speaking it now. I am very 
proud of loving you. I know I have laid up a 
store of unhappiness, may be one that will last 
me my days; but I shall never regret it. I 
stand higher in my own estimation that I 
couldn’t live in the same house with you week 
after week and not love you.” 

“ But I — I never gave you — ” 
a Now you are on dangerous ground,” said 
John Dent. “ If you hate me, don’t tell me; 
if you love me, don’t tell me, for I could not 
bear that either. I pledge you my honor I 
don’t know, I only hope, and would not know 
for the world.” 

Here was a lover — one man out of ten thou- 
san( l_ w ho was ready to bind himself hand 


76 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


and foot for his sweetheart, and would have 
no vows from her, even if she were willing to 
make them. He said nothing less than the 
truth when he declared his ignorance of the 
nature of Prue’s feelings. She liked him, of 
course, — that went without saying; but further 
than that he did not know. He was content 
to go away with so much hope as lies in uncer¬ 
tainty, and perhaps he was wise. 

“ You speak of love and hate,” said Pru¬ 
dence, tracing a hieroglyphic on the piazza 
with the toe of her boot, “ as if there was 
nothing between. What prevents me from be¬ 
ing your friend ? Your plans and welfare in¬ 
terest me very deeply, and I am glad of the 
chance to talk with you about them. Where 
are you going when you leave Rivermouth ? ” 

“ To California.” 

“ So far ! ” 

“ I am going to the mines, — the only short 
cut to fortune open to me. I’m sadly in lack 
of that kind of nerve which enables a man to 
plod on year in and year out for a mere sub¬ 
sistence. I am not afraid of hard work; I am 
ready to crowd the labor of half a lifetime 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


77 


into a few months for the sake of having the 
result in a lump. But I must have it in a 
lump. I won’t accept fortune in driblets. I 
don’t think I would stoop to pick up less than 
an ounce of gold at a time. I’ve a convic¬ 
tion, Prue, I shall light on some fat nuggets; 
they can’t all have been found.” 

“ I hope not,” responded Prudence, smiling. 

John Dent did not smile. As he spoke, his 
face flushed, and a lambent glow came into his 
eyes, as if he saw rich masses of the yellow 
ore cropping out among Parson Hawkins’s ma¬ 
rigold-beds. 

“ I have a theory,” he said, “ that a man 
never wants a thing as I want this, and is will¬ 
ing to pay the price for it, without getting it. 
I mean to come back independent, or not at 
all. I have discovered that a man without 
money in his pocket, or the knack to get it, 
had better be in his family tomb, — if he has 
a family tomb. That is about the only plact> 
where he will not be in the way. Moralists, 
surrounded by every luxury, frown down on 
what they call the lust of riches. It is one of 
the noblest of human instincts. The very pen 


78 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


and paper, and the small amount of culture 
which enables these ungrateful fellows to write 
their lopsided essays, would have been impos¬ 
sible without it. Some one has said this be¬ 
fore,— but not so well,’’ added John Dent, 
complacently, suddenly conscious that he was 
hammering away at one of Mr. Arthur Helps’s 
ideas. “ There was more sound sense in Iago’s 
advice than he gets credit for. I mean to put 
money in my purse, Prue, and then come back 
to Rivermouth, and ask you to be my wife. 
There, I have sa ; d it. Are you angry ? ” 

“ N-o, not very,” said Prudence, a little flur¬ 
ried. “ But suppose I have married ‘ auld 
Robin Gray’ in the mean time?” she added 
slyly. 

“You are free to do it.” 

“ And you ’ll not scowl at him, and make a 
scene of it when you come back ? ” 

“ I shall hate him,” cried John Dent, as a 
venerable figure of a possible “ auld Robin 
Gray” limped for an instant before his mind’s 
eye. “ No, Prue; I shall have no right to 
hate him. I shall only envy him. Perhaps 
I’ll be magnanimous if lie’s a poor man,— 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


79 


though he wasn’t poor in the ballad, — and 
turn over my wealth to him; it would be of 
no use to me without you. Then I’d go back 
to the wilds again.” 

He said this with a bleak laugh, and Pru¬ 
dence smiled, and her heart was as heavy as 
lead. It required an effort not to tell him that 
she would not marry though he stayed away a 
thousand years. If John Dent had asked Pru¬ 
dence that moment if she loved him, she would 
have thrown her cautious resolves to the winds; 
if he had asked her to go to the gold-fields 
with him, she would have tightened her bonnet- 
strings under her chin, and placed her hand in 
his. But the moment went by. 

Prudence had moved away from the front 
door, and seated herself on the small bench at 
the end of the piazza, much to the chagrin of 
the Widow Mugridge, who had been feverishly 
watching the interview, and speculating on its 
probable nature, from a rear attic window 
across the street. 

“ I must go now,” said Prudence, rising 
hastily. “ I promised Uncle Ralph not to be 
long. I’m afraid I have been long. He will 


80 


PEUDENGE PALFEEY. 


wonder what has kept me, and I have not seen 
the parson yet.” 

“ I suppose I may write to you? ” said John 
Dent. “ I shall want to write only two let¬ 
ters,” he added, quickly; “ one on my arrival 
at the mines, and one some months afterwards, 
to tell you the result of the expedition. As I 
shall send these letters under cover to Uncle 
Dent, there will be no offence. I do not ask 
you to answer them.” 

“ He cannot object to that,” said Prudence. 
“ In spite of what has passed, I am sure he 
will be glad to hear of your movements, and 
anxious for your success.” 

“ I am not so positive on that head.” 

“ You do him injustice, then,” returned Pru¬ 
dence, warmly. “ You don’t know how good 
he is.” 

“ I know how good he is n't.” 

“ You mistake him entirely. He was willing 
to look upon you as his own son.” 

“ But not as his son-in-law,” suggested John 
Dent. 

“ He has not told me the particulars of the 
conversation,” said Prudence, U but I am con- 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


81 


vinced lie said nothing to you that was not 
wise and kind and candid.” 

“ It was certainly candid.” 

“ I see we shall not agree on this subject; 
let us speak of something pleasanter. When 
are you going away?” 

“ My going away is a pleasanter subject, 
then ? ” 

“ Yes, because it is something we cannot 
easily quarrel over.” 

“ I shall leave Rivermouth to-morrow. Now 
that I have seen you, there is nothing to de¬ 
tain us.” 

“ Us ? you don’t go alone, then ? ” 

“ No ; Joe Twombly is going with me ; you 
know him, the deacon’s son. A very good fel¬ 
low, Joe. His family made a great row at 
first. He had to talk over the two old folks, 
six grown sisters, the twins, and the baby. 
He ’s been bidding them good by ever since 
the week before last. I quite envy him the 
widespread misery he is causing. I have only 
you and Parson Hawkins in the whole world 
to say good by to, and you can’t begin to be 
as sorry as six sisters.” 

4* F 


82 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


“ But I can be as sorry as one,” said Prue, 
giving him her ungloved hand, and not with¬ 
drawing it. It was as white and cold as a 
snow-flake. 

“ I ’d like to know what that Palfrey gal ’s 
a-doin’ with Squire Dent’s nevy on the par¬ 
son’s front piazza,” muttered the Widow Mug- 
ridge, as she stretched her pelican-like neck 
out of the attic window. 

“ What, Prue ! —you ’re not crying ? ” 

“ Yes, I am,” said Prudence, looking up 
through two tears which had been troubling 
her some time. “ Cannot a sister cry if she 
wants to ? ” 

“If you are my sister — ” And John Dent 
hesitated. 

Prudence gave a little sob. 

“ If you are my sister, you will let me kiss 
you good-by.” 

“ Yes,” said Prudence. 

Then John Dent stooped down and kissed 
her. 

“ Hoity-toity ! what ’s this ? ” cried Parson 
Hawkins, appearing suddenly in the doorway 
with one finger shut in a vast folio, and his 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


83 


spectacles pushed up on liis forehead, giving 
him the aspect of some benevolent four-eyed 
monster. 

“ There’s the parson now,” soliloquized the 
Widow Mugridge. “ Mebbe he did n’t come 
’fore he’s wanted. Sech goin’s on ! ” 

As Prue drew back, she pressed into John 
Dent’s hand a little bunch of fuchsias which 
she had worn at her throat; lie thanked her 
with a look, and was gone. 

So the two parted,— Prudence Palfrey to 
resume the quiet, colorless life of Willowbrook, 
and John Dent to go in search of his dragons. 


84 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


VI. 

Concerning a Skeleton in a Closet. 

P RUE, on returning home, said nothing to 
her guardian touching the interview with 
John Dent at the parsonage. 

She did not intend to hide the matter, but 
it was all too new and distracting for her to 
speak about just then. She was flurried, and 
wanted time to think it over. She lay awake 
half the night thinking of it, and began re¬ 
proaching herself for her coldness and co¬ 
quetry. How generous John Dent had been 
with her, and how calculating and worldly wise 
she had been on her part. He was going away 
to face hardship and danger, perhaps death it¬ 
self, for her sake, — she understood clearly it 
was for her sake, — and she had let him go 
without speaking the word that would have 
made this comparatively easy for him. It was 
true, he had begged her not to speak the 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


85 


word; but she might have spoken it like an 
honest girl. She had given him a marble 
cheek to salute, when she ought to have thrown 
her arms around his neck. What was there 
to prevent her loving him and telling him so ? 

The generosity had been wholly on the side 
of her lover, and no woman is content with 
that; so Prue’s heart warmed to him all the 
more because she had not been allowed to 
sacrifice herself in the least, and she fell asleep 
with the vow upon her lips that if she did not 
marry John Dent she would never marry. 

At the breakfast-room door the next morn¬ 
ing, Prudence met her guardian returning from 
a walk. He had been marketing at River- 
mouth bright and early, and had had the un¬ 
looked-for satisfaction of beholding at a dis¬ 
tance his nephew and Joseph Twombly stand¬ 
ing in the midst of their luggage on the plat¬ 
form of the railway station. But it chanced 
that on the way home Mr. Dent had picked up 
a piece of intelligence which turned the edge 
of his satisfaction. 

“ Laws ’a mercy, if that ain’t Mr. Ralph 
Dent! ” cried a shrill, querulous voice at his 


86 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


elbow, as that gentleman turned into Penhal- 
low Place. It was the Widow Mugridge sweep¬ 
ing the flag-stones in front of her domicile. 
“ Who ’d ’a’ thought you ’d ketch me tidy in’ 
up a bit this airly in the mornin’! It’s the 
airly bird that gits the worm, Mr. Dent. Ben 
to see your nevy off to Califerny, I s’pose! I 
see him an’ Miss Prudence a-cliirpin’ thicker ’n 
blackbirds over there on the parson’s piazzer 
yisterday forenoon, an’ thought likely’s not he 
was goin’ away at last. An’ Joe, too — dear 
me! They do say Deacon Twombly’s folks is 
dreffully cut up — ” 

Buz, buz, buz ! Mr. Dent did not wait to 
hear more, but lifting his hat to the old lady, 
hurried down the street. 

“ I’d wager a cookey, now,” said the good 
soul, leaning on the broom-handle meditatively, 
and following Mr. Dent’s vanishing figure with 
a lack-lustre blue eye, — “ I’d wager a cookey, 
now, young Dent has ben settin’ up to that 
Palfrey gal, an’ there’s ben trouble. Thought 
so all ’long. Clem Hoyt fetched away young 
Dent’s trunk more ’n two weeks ago, and he 
has n’t set in the family pew sence. Guess 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


87 


things muster ben purty lively up to Willow- 
brook house. Well, now, it’s cur’ous, how 
folks will fall to sixes an’ sevins, ’specially re¬ 
lations, right in the face of their Creater!” 

Mr. Dent gave Prudence a frigid good morn¬ 
ing. He had no heart to arraign her for her 
seeming duplicity; he had no heart for any¬ 
thing. Prue loved his nephew, and the two 
had met, — met in secret. One had defied him 
and the other had deceived him. 

I scarcely know how to describe the emotions 
and perplexities that beset Mr. Dent at this 
period, without shearing him of some of those 
practical attributes which I have claimed for 
him. 

When his nephew, that day on the road to 
Rivermouth, declared his intentions regarding 
Prue, Mr. Dent was startled and alarmed. 
That Prudence would marry some time or 
other, had occurred to him faintly as a possi¬ 
bility,— a possibility so far in the future as 
not to be considered; but John Dent had 
taught him that the time was come when his 
hold on Prue would be slight, were the right 
man to demand her. John Dent was clearly 


88 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


not the right man, and Mr. Dent had opposed 
the arrangement, chiefly, as he imagined, be¬ 
cause his nephew was not in a position to 
marry; but under it all was a strangely born 
and indefinable jealousy. Prue’s declaration 
on the piazza that afternoon fell upon Mr. 
Dent like lightning from a cloudless sky; by 
the flash of her love he saw the depth of his 
own affection. It sometimes happens, outside 
the covers of romances, that a man rears an 
adopted girl from the cradle, and falls in love 
with her when she gets into long dresses,— 
that the love creeps into existence unsuspected, 
and asserts itself suddenly, full-grown. It was 
something very like this that had happened to 
Mr. Dent. 

There is said to be a skeleton in every house. 
Until then there had never been a skeleton at 
Willowbrook, at least since Mr. Dent owned 
the property; but there was one now, and Mr. 
Dent’s task henceforth was to see that the 
ghastly thing did not peep out of its closet. 
Prudence should never dream of its existence; 
he would stand a grim sentinel over the secret 
until the earth covered him and it. He thought 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


89 


it hard, after the disappointment of his youth, 
that such a burden should be laid upon his 
later years; but he would bear it as he had 
borne the other. 

He saw his duty plainly enough, but there 
were almost insuperable difficulties in the per¬ 
formance of it. It was next to impossible for 
him to meet Prudence on the same familiar 
footing as formerly; the unrestrained intimacy 
that had held between them was full of peril 
for his secret. He must be always on his 
guard lest she should catch a glimpse of the 
Bluebeard chamber where lie had hidden his 
stifled love. An unconsidered word or look 
might be a key to it. Now it so fell out, in 
his perplexity as to which was the least dan¬ 
gerous method to pursue, that this amiable and 
honest gentleman began treating the girl with 
a coldness and constraint which gradually 
merged into a degree of harshness he was far 
from suspecting. 

Acknowledging to herself that she had given 
her guardian some grounds for displeasure, 
Prudence was ready to make any advances 
towards a reconciliation; but Mr. Dent gave 


90 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


her no encouragement; he was ice to her. At 
this stage business called him to Boston, where 
he remained a fortnight. 

“ He will forgive me before he comes home,” 
Prudence said to herself; but he came home 
as he went away, gelid. 

As she leaned over his chair at bedtime that 
night to offer him her forehead to kiss, a 
pretty fashion which had outlived her child¬ 
hood, he all but repulsed her. Prue shrank 
back, and never attempted to repeat the ca¬ 
ress. 

“ He is still angry,” she thought, “ because 
he fancies there is some engagement between 
me and John Dent.” 

But she was too proud now, as she had been 
too timid before, to tell him what had passed 
at Parson Hawkins’s. He evidently knew they 
had met there; she had forfeited his confidence 
and respect, and that was hard to bear, harder 
than John Dent’s absence, a great deal. She 
would have borne that cheerfully if her guar¬ 
dian had let her; but he made even that 
heavier. 

The old parson was Prue’s only resource at 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


91 


this time. Whenever household duties gave her 
leave, she went straight to the parsonage, and 
sat for hours on the little green bench under 
the vines, nearly leafless now, where John 
Dent had waited for her. She called it her 
stool of penitence. Here she actually read 
through Adam Smith on “ The Wealth of Na¬ 
tions,” a feat which I venture to assert has 
been accomplished by few young women in New 
England or elsewhere. It was like a novel to 
her. 

Sometimes the parson would bring his arm¬ 
chair out on the piazza into the sunshine, and 
the two would hold long discourses on Califor¬ 
nia and John Dent; for the parson had a fond¬ 
ness for the young fellow; he had taught Jack 
Latin when he was a kid; besides, the boy’s 
father had been dear to him. How far the 
young man had taken Parson Hawkins into 
his confidence, I do not know ; but it is pre¬ 
sumable that Prudence told her old friend all 
there was to tell. Often the parson was absent 
from home, visiting parishioners, and Prudence 
sat there alone, thinking of John Dent. She 
had fallen into so pitiable a state that this be- 


92 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


came her sole pleasure, — to walk a mile and a 
quarter to a place where she could be thor¬ 
oughly miserable. 

These frequent pilgrimages to Horseshoe 
Lane filled Mr. Dent with lively jealousy. He 
grew to hate the simple old gentleman, whose 
society was openly preferred to his own, though 
he did not make his own too agreeable. 

He blamed the parson for coming between 
him and Prudence; most of all he blamed him 
for allowing John Dent to meet her clandes¬ 
tinely under his roof. He made no doubt but 
the intriguing old woman — for what was he 
but an old woman? — had connived at the 
meeting, very likely brought it about. Perhaps 
he saw a pitiful marriage-fee at the end of his 
plots and his traps, the wretched old miser! 

If Prudence was rendered unhappy by her 
guardian’s harsh humor, he was touched to the 
heart by her apparent indifference. They saw 
each other rarely now, only at meals and some¬ 
times in the sitting-room after dinner. Mr. 
Dent spent his time mostly in the library, and 
Prudence kept out of the way. She no longer 
played chess with him or read to him of an 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


93 


evening. The autumn evenings were dull and 
interminable at Willowbrook. If it had been 
Mr. Dent’s purpose to make Prudence miss his 
nephew every hour of the day, Machiavelli him¬ 
self could not have improved on the course he 
was pursuing. 

One afternoon, after nearly three months of 
this, Mr. Dent received an envelope from his 
nephew enclosing a letter for Prudence. Mr. 
Dent’s first impulse was to throw the missive 
into the grate; but he followed his second im¬ 
pulse, and carried it to her, though it burnt 
his fingers like a hot coal. 

Prudence started and colored when her eyes 
fell upon the superscription, but she made no 
motion to take the letter; she let it lie on the 
table where he had placed it. 

“ She wishes to read it alone,” said Mr. Dent 
to himself, bitterly. He was marching off to 
the door as stiff as a grenadier when Prudence 
intercepted him. 

“ Are we never going to be friends again ? ” 
she said, laying her hand lightly on his arm. 
“ Are you never going to like me any more ? 
I begin to feel that I am a stranger in the 


94 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


house; it is no longer my home as it was. 
Do you know what I shall do when I am con¬ 
vinced you have entirely ceased to care for me ? 
I shall go away from you.” 

He gave a quick glance at Prudence’s face, 
and saw that she meant it. 

“ Go away from me ? ” he exclaimed. “ What 
in God’s world could I do without you! ” 

“ I cannot go on living here if you don’t love 
me. I have done nothing to deserve your un¬ 
kindness. I saw John Dent only by chance, I 
did not go to meet him, there is no engage¬ 
ment between us; but I love him, and shall 
love him always. I regret every day of my life 
that I did not tell him so, like an honest girl. 
That is really my only fault. For all this I 
ask your forgiveness so far as you consider 
yourself disobeyed. You have been unjustly 
severe with me. In a little while your severity 
will lose the power of wounding, and I shall 
think only of your injustice.” 

Then Prudence walked away and sat down 
by the work-table. 

Every word of this was a dagger to Mr. 
Dent. Had he been cruel to her? It was 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


95 


plain lie had. He was struck now by the 
change that had taken place in Prudence with¬ 
in three months. He had not noticed until 
then how pale she was ; there were dark cir¬ 
cles under her eyes that seemed to darken lier 
whole face, and the eyes themselves were grown 
large and lustrous, like a consumptive’s. As 
her hands lay in her lap, he observed how 
white and thin they were; and his conscience 
smote him. It was not enough he should keep 
the skeleton securely locked in its closet; his 
duty went further; the girl’s health and happi¬ 
ness were to be looked after a little, and he 
had neglected that. 

“ Prue,” he said, with sudden remorse, “ I 
have been very blind and unreasonable. Only 
be a happy girl again, and I will ask you to 
do nothing else except to forgive me for not 
finding it easy to yield you up to the first 
young fellow that came along and asked for 
you. You have been my own girl for so many 
years, that the thought of losing you distracted 
me. But we won’t speak about that. Write 
to Jack, and tell him to come home; he shall 
be welcome to Willowbrook. I ’ll bury a bushel 


96 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


of gold eagles in the lawn for him to dig up, 
if he is still mad on the subject. All I have 
is yours and his. What do I care for beyond 
your happiness ? ” And Mr. Dent put his arm 
around Prudence and kissed her much the 
same as he might have done before John Dent 
ever came to Rivermouth. 

The wisest way to treat a skeleton is to 
ignore it. There is nothing a skeleton likes 
more than coddling : nothing it likes less than 
neglect. Neglect causes it to pine away — if a 
skeleton, even in a metaphor, can be said to 
pine away — and crumble into dust. 

“ And now,” cried Mr. Dent, “ let us see 
what the young man has to say for himself.” 

He never did things by halves, this honest 
gentleman. When he made beer he made the 
best beer Rivermouth ever tasted ; though he 
was no longer proud of it. 

He picked up the letter and handed it to 
Prudence, who could not speak for surprise 
and joy over this sudden transformation. She 
sat motionless for a minute, with her eyes 
bright with tears, and then broke the seal. 

“I ’ll read it aloud,” said Prue primly, as 
one with authority. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


97 


The letter was not from California, as they 
had expected, but was dated at an obscure lit¬ 
tle post-village with a savage name somewhere 
on the frontiers of Montana. 

Bewildering rumors of gold discoveries in 
the Indian Territory had caused a change in 
the plans of the adventurers at the last mo¬ 
ment.* Instead of proceeding to San Fran¬ 
cisco, they had struck for the other side of 
the Rocky Mountains. They were now on 
their way to the new gold regions. At Salt 
Lake City, where they had halted to purchase 
mining implements, tents, provisions, etc., John 
Dent had been too busy to write; he did not 
know when he would be able to write again ; 
probably not for several months. They were 
going into the wilds where postal arrange¬ 
ments were of the most primitive order. The 
country was said to be infested by bushwhack¬ 
ers, on the lookout for unprotected baggage- 
trains bound for the diggings, and for lucky 
miners returning with their spoils. Besides, 
scouting parties of the Bannock tribe had an 

* In point of fact, the discovery of gold in Montana took 
place at a period somewhat later than that indicated here. 

5 Q 


98 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


ugly fashion of waylaying the mail and dec¬ 
orating their persons with cancelled postage- 
stamps. Under these circumstances communi¬ 
cation with the States would be difficult and 
might be impossible. Dent and Twombly were 
travelling with a body of forty or fifty men, 
among whom certain claims already secured 
were to be divided on their arrival at the point 
of destination in Red Rock Canon. Their 
special mess consisted of Twombly, Dent, and 
a young man named Nevins, whom they had 
picked up at Salt Lake City. This Nevins, it 
appeared, had made a fortune in California in 
’ 56 , and lost it in some crazy silver-mining 
speculation two years before. He had come 
over with a crowd from Nevada, and found him¬ 
self in Salt Lake City with one suit of clothes 
and a large surplus of unemployed pluck. He 
was thoroughly up in gold-digging, a very su> 
perior fellow in every way, and would be of 
immense service to the tyros. The three were 
to work on shares, Nevins putting his knowL 
edge and experience against their capital and 
ignorance. John Dent was in high spirits. 

If there was any gold in Montana, he and 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


99 


Twombly and Nevins had sworn to have it. 
There was no doubt of the gold; and three 
bold hearts and three pairs of strong hands 
were going to seek it all they knew. “ I 
thank my stars,” he wrote, “ that Uncle Dent 
opposed me as he did in a certain matter; if 
he had not, I should probably at this moment 
be lying around New York on a beggarly sal¬ 
ary, instead of marching along with a score or 
so of brave fellows to pick up a princely for¬ 
tune in Red Rock Canon.” 

“ Well, I hope he will pick up the princely 
fortune, with all my heart,” remarked Mr. 
Dent, when they came to the end of the dis¬ 
jointed and incoherent four pages. 

There was not a word of love in them, and 
no allusion to the past, except the passage 
quoted, and the reading had been without awk¬ 
wardness. 

Prue was relieved, for she had broken the 
seal with some doubt as to the effect of a 
love-letter on her guardian even in his present 
blissful mood; and Mr. Dent himself was well 
satisfied with the absence of sentiment, though 
the spirit underlying the letter was evident 
enough. 


100 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


“ If 1 were a man,” Prudence said, “ I would 
not be a clerk in a shop, or sit all day like a 
manikin on a stool with a pen stuck behind 
my ear, while new worlds full of riches and 
adventures lay wide open for gallant souls. 
Cousin John was right to go, and I would not 
have him return, until he has done his best 
like a man. It will be a great thing for him, 
uncle, it will teach him self-assurance and — ” 

“ But, Prue, dear, I don’t think that was a 
quality he lacked,” put in Mr. Dent, with a 
twinkle in his eye. 

u Well, it will do him good, anyhow,” said 
Prue, didactically; then, sinking her voice to 
a minor key and sweeping her guardian from 
head to foot with her silken lashes, she add¬ 
ed, “ and I do not mind so much his being 
away, now you are kind to me. What trouble 
could be unbearable while I can turn to you 
who have been father, mother, lover, and all 
the world to me ! ” 

She was rewarding him for his concessions. 
The words dropped like honey from the girl’s 
lips. An hour before they would have been 
full of bitterness to him; but he was a new 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


101 


man within these sixty minutes ; he had tram¬ 
pled his folly under foot, and was ready to 
accept as very precious the only kind of affec¬ 
tion she had to give him. The color must be 
lured back into those cheeks and the troubled 
face taught to wear its happy look again. 
What a cruel egotist he had been, nursing his 
own preposterous fancies and breaking down 
the health of the girl! 

44 A perfect dog in the manger,” he said to 
himself, as he marched up and down the gar¬ 
den walks, in the afternoon sunshine, with a 
lighter heart than he had carried for many a 
week. 44 And what a sentimental old dog! 
I shall be writing verses next, and printing 
them in the poet’s corner in the Rivermouth 
Barnacle. I declare I am alarmed about my¬ 
self. A man ought n’t to be in his dotage at 
fifty-six. If Jack knew of this he would be 
justified in placing me in the State Lunatic 
Asylum.” 

So Mr. Dent derided himself pleasantly that 
afternoon, and said severer things of his con¬ 
duct than I am disposed to set down here, 
though it is certainly a great piece of folly for 


102 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


a young lad of fifty-six to fall in love with an 
old lady of eighteen, — particularly when she 
is his ward, and especially when she loves his 
nephew. 

The four or five months that succeeded the 
receipt of John Dent’s letter sped swiftly and 
happily over the Willowbrook people. Mr. 
Dent was, if anything, kinder to Prudence 
than he had ever been. His self-conquest was 
so complete that on several occasions he led 
himself in chains, so to speak, to the parson¬ 
age, and took a morbid pleasure in playing 
backgammon with the old clergyman. 

No further tidings had come to them from 
John Dent; but Prudence had been prepared 
for a long silence, and did not permit this to 
disturb her. She was her own self again, fill¬ 
ing the house with sunshine. 

Mr. Dent said to her one day: “ Prue, I 
really believe that you love Jack.” 

Prudence beamed upon him. 

“ What made you ? ” asked her guardian, 
thoughtfully. 

“ He did.” 

“ I suppose so ; but I don’t see how he did 
it.” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


103 


“ Well, then, you did.” 

«I? ” 

“ Yes, — by opposing us ! ” 

“ 0, if I had shut my eyes and allowed Jack 
to make love to you, then you would n’t have 
loved him ? ” 

“ Possibly not.” 

“ I wish I had let him! ” 

“ I wish you had,” said Prue, demurely. 

“ It was obstinacy, then ? ” 
u Just sheer obstinacy,” said Prue, turning 
a hem and smoothing it on her knee with the 
rosy nail of her forefinger. Then she leaned 
one elbow on the work, and, resting her chin 
on her palm, looked up into her guardian’s 
face after the manner of that little left-hand 
cherub in the foreground of Raphael’s Madonna 
di San Sisto. 

Mr. Dent went on with his newspaper, leav¬ 
ing Prue in a brown study. 

The period preceding John Dent’s visit seemed 
to Prudence like some far-off historical epoch 
with which she could not imagine herself con¬ 
temporary. Her existence had been so color¬ 
less before, made up of unimportant happy 


104 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


nothings. It was so full now of complicated 
possibilities. A new future had opened upon 
her, all unlike that eventless one she had been 
in the habit of contemplating, in which she 
was to glide from merry girlhood with its 
round hats, into full-blown spinstership with 
its sedate bonnets, and thence into serene old 
age with its prim caps and silver-bowed specta¬ 
cle^— mistress of Willowbrook in these vari¬ 
ous stages, placidly pouring out tea for her 
guardian and executing chefs-d' oeuvre in worsted 
to be sold for the benefit of the heathen. 

This tranquil picture — with that vague back¬ 
ground of cemetery which will come into pic¬ 
tures of the future — had not been without its 
charm for Prudence. To grow old leisurely in 
that pleasant old mansion among the willows, 
and to fall asleep in the summer or winter twi¬ 
light after an untroubled, secluded-violet sort of 
life, had not appeared so hard a fate to her. 
But now it seemed to Prudence that that would 
be a very hard fate indeed. 

In the mean while the days wore on, not un¬ 
happily, as I have said. Nearly a year went 
by, and then Prudence began to share the anx- 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


105 


icty of the Twombly family, who had heard 
nothing from Joseph since the enclosure sent 
in John Dent’s letter. 

“You remember what he wrote about the 
uncertainty of the mails,” said Mr. Dent, clieer- 
ingly. “ More than likely the Bannock braves 
are at this moment seated around the council- 
fire, with all their war-paint on, perusing Jack’s 
last epistle, and wondering what the deuce he 
is driving at.” 

Prue laughed, but her anxiety was not dis¬ 
pelled by the suggestion. She had a presenti¬ 
ment which she could not throw off that all 
was not well with the adventurers. What 
might not happen to them, among the desper¬ 
ate white men and lawless savages, out there 
in the Territory ? Mr. Dent called her his little 
pocket Cassandra, and tried to laugh down her 
fancies; but in the midst of his pleasantries 
and her forebodings a letter came, — a letter 
which Prudence read with blanched lip and 
cheek, and then laid away, to grow yellow with 
time, in a disused drawer of the old brass- 
mounted writing-desk that stood in her bed¬ 
room. It was a letter with treachery and ship- 


5* 


106 PRUDENCE PALFREY. 

wreck and despair in it. A great calamity 
had befallen John Dent. He had made his 
pile—and lost it. But how he made it and 
how he lost it must be told by itself. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


107 


VII. 


How John Dent made his Pile and lost it. 

I T is an epic that ought to be sung at length, 
if one had the skill and the time ; but I have 
neither the time nor the skill, and must make 
a ballad of it. The material of this chapter 
is drawn chiefly from Joseph Twombly’s verbal 
narrative, and the fragments of a journal which 
John Dent kept at intervals in those days. 

It was an afternoon in the latter part of 
September that the party with which Dent and 
Twombly and Nevins had associated themselves 
drew rein, on a narrow bridle-path far up the 
side of a mountain in Eastern Montana. Ris¬ 
ing in their stirrups, and holding on by the 
pommels of their saddles, they leaned over the 
sheer edge of the precipice and saw the Prom¬ 
ised Land lying at their feet. On one side of 
an impetuous stream, that ran golden in the 


108 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


reflected glow of the remoter peaks, lay a city 
of tents, pine-liuts, and rude brush wakiups, 
from which spiral columns of smoke slowly 
ascended here and there, and melted as they 
touched the upper currents of the wind. Along 
the canon, following the course of the stream, 
were hundreds of blue and red and gray fig¬ 
ures moving about restlessly like ants. These 
were miners at work. Now and then the wan¬ 
ing sunlight caught the point of an uplifted 
pick, and it sparkled like a flake of mica. 

It was a lonely spot. All this busy human 
life did not frighten away the spirit of isola¬ 
tion that had brooded over it since the world 
was made. Shut in by savage hills, stretch¬ 
ing themselves cloudward like impregnable bat¬ 
tlements, it seemed as if nothing but a miracle 
had led the foot of man to its interior sol¬ 
itude. What a lovely, happy nook it seemed, 
flooded with the ruddy stream of sunset! No 
wonder the tired riders halted on the moun¬ 
tain-side, gazing down half doubtingly upon its 
beauty. 

“ Dent,” whispered George Nevins, impres¬ 
sively, “ there is gold here.” Then he sat mo- 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


109 


tionless for a few minutes, taking in every 
aspect of the canon. “ What gold there is 
over yonder,” he presently added, in the same 
low voice, “ is pulverized, lying in secret crevi¬ 
ces, or packed away in the sands of the 
river-bed; troublesome hard work to get it, 
too. How neatly Nature stows it away, con¬ 
found her! ” 

“ But there is gold ? ” 

“ Tons — for the man that can find the rich 
spots.” 

“ And nuggets ? ” 

“ And nuggets.” 

“ Let us go! ” cried John Dent, plunging 
the spurs into his horse. The rest of the 
party, refreshed by the halt, followed ^uit, and 
the train swept down the mountain-path, the 
rowels and bells of their Spanish spurs jing¬ 
ling like mad. 

So they entered the Montana diggings. 

More than once on their journey to Red 
Rock, which had not been without its perils, 
Dent and Twombly had found Nevins’s experi¬ 
ence and readiness of great advantage to them, 


110 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


and that afternoon, on arriving at the canon, 
they had fresh cause to congratulate them¬ 
selves on having him for a comrade. Two 
diggers, who were working a pit below them 
on the ravine, had encroached on their claim, 
and seemed indisposed to relinquish a certain 
strip of soil next the stream very convenient 
for washing purposes. Nevins measured the 
ground carefully, coolly pulled up the stakes 
which had been removed, and set them back 
in their original holes. He smiled while he 
was doing this, but it was a wicked sort of 
smile, as dangerous as a sunstroke. 

The men eyed him sullenly for a dozen or 
twenty seconds ; then one of them walked up 
to his mate and whispered in his ear, and then 
the pair strolled off, glancing warily from time 
to time over their shoulders. 

Dent and Twombly looked on curiously. 
Dent would have argued the case, and proved 
to them, by algebra, that they were wrong; 
Twombly would have compromised by a division 
of the disputed tract; but Nevins was an old 
hand, and knew how to hold his own. 

“The man who hesitates in this community 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


Ill 


is lost,” said Nevins, turning to liis compan¬ 
ions. “ If I had not meant fight, they would 
have shot me. As it was—I should have 
shot them.” 

“ Why, Nevins ! ” cried Twombly, “ what a 
bloodthirsty fellow you are, to be sure ! ” 

“ You wait,” Nevins said. “ You don’t 
know what kind of crowd you have got into. 
Here and there, maybe, there’s an honest fel¬ 
low, but as for the rest, — jail-birds from the 
States, gamblers from San Francisco, roughs 
from Colorado and Nevada, and blackguards 
from everywhere. Our fellow-citizens in the 
flourishing town of Red Rock are the choice 
scum and sediment of society, and I shall be 
out of my reckoning if the crack of the re¬ 
volver does n’t become as familiar to our ears 
as the croak of the bullfrogs over there in the 
alders.” 

Nevins had not drawn a flattering picture of 
the inhabitants of Red Rock; but it was as 
literal as a photograph. 

The rumors of a discovery of rich placer 
diggings in Montana had flown like wildfire 
through the Territories and the border States, 


112 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


and caused a stampede among the classes first 
affected by that kind of intelligence. Two 
months before, the valley was a solitude. Only 
the songs of birds, the plunge of a red-deer 
among the thickets, or the cry of some savage 
animal, broke its stillness. One day a trapper 
wandered by chance into the canon, and got 
benighted there. In the morning, eating his 
breakfast, he had stuck his sheath-knife for 
convenience into the earth beside him; on 
withdrawing it he saw a yellow speck shining 
in the bit of dirt adhering to the blade. The 
trapper quietly got up and marked out his 
claim. He knew it could not be kept secret. 
A man may commit murder and escape sus¬ 
picion, though “ murder speaks with most mi¬ 
raculous organ ” ; but he may never hope to 
discover gold and not he found out. 

Two months later there was a humming 
town in Red Rock Canon, with a population 
of two thousand and upwards. 

There was probably never a mining town of 
the same size that contained more desperadoes 
than Red Rock in the first year of its exist¬ 
ence. Hither flocked all the ruffians that had 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


113 


made other localities too hot to hold them,— 
gentlemen with too much reputation, and ladies 
with too little ; and here was formed the nu¬ 
cleus of that gang of marauders, known as 
Henry Plummer’s Road Agent Band, which 
haunted the mountain-passes, pillaging and 
murdering, until the Vigilantes took them in 
hand and hanged them with as short shrift 
and as scant mercy as they had given their 
fellow-men. That is a black page in the his¬ 
tory of American gold-seeking which closes 
with the execution of Joe Pizantliia, Buck 
Stinson, Haze Lyons, Boone Helme, Erastus 
Yager, Dutch John, Club-foot George, and 
Bill Graves, — their very names are a kind of 
murder.* And these were prominent citizens 
of Red Rock when our little party of adven¬ 
turers set up their tent and went to work on 
their claim in the golden valley. 

“ Nevins has not mistaken the geological any 
more than he has the moral character of the 

* An account of the careers of these men is to he found in 
a curious little work by Prof. Thomas J. Dimsdale, of Virginia 
City, who narrowly escaped writing a very notable book when 
he wrote “The Vigilantes of Montana.” 


114 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


canon,” writes John Dent in liis journal under 
date of October 12. “ Gold-dust lias been found 

scattered all along the bed of the river, and in 
some instances lucky prospectors have struck 
rich pockets; but of those massive nuggets 
which used to drive men wild in the annus 
mirabilis ’49 we have seen none yet, though 
there is a story afloat about a half-breed find¬ 
ing one as big as a cocoanut! I am modest 
myself, and am willing to put up with a dozen 
or twenty nuggets of half that size. It does n’t 
become a Christian to be grasping. Mem. 
Digging for gold, however it may dilate the 
imagination in theory, is practically devilish. 
hard work.” 

This is a discovery which it appears was made 
by our friends long before they discovered the 
gold itself. For a fortnight they toiled like 
Trojans; they gave themselves hardly time to 
eat; at night they dropped asleep like beasts 
of burden; and at the end of fourteen days 
they had found no gold. At the end of the 
third week they had made nearly a dollar a 
day each, — half the wages of a day-laborer at 
the East. John Dent, with a heavy sigh, sug- 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


115 


gested that they had better look up a claim 
for a cemetery. 

“ I never like to win the first hand,” said 
Nevins, genially; “ it brings bad luck.” 

“ The fellows from Sacramento, down the 
stream, are taking out seven hundred a week,” 
remarked Twombly. 

“ Our turn will come,” Nevins replied, cheerly 
still, like Abou Ben Adhem to the Angel. 

This was on Sunday. The trio had knocked 
off work, and so had the camp generally. Sun¬ 
day was a gala day. The bar-rooms and the 
gambling-saloons were thronged; at sundown 
the dance-house would open, — the Hurdy-Gurdy 
House, as it was called. Lounging about camp, 
but as a usual thing in close propinquity to 
some bar, were knots of unsuccessful diggers, 
anathematizing their luck and on the alert for 
an invitation to drink. All day Sunday an 
odor of mixed drinks floated up from Red 
Rock and hung over it in impalpable clouds. 

The three friends strolled through the town 
on a tour of observation, and brought up at 
the door of a saloon where a crowd was gath¬ 
ered. A man had been shot at one of the 


116 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


tables, and his comrades were fetching him 
out, dead, with his derringer, still smoking, 
clutched in his hand. Following the corpse 
was a lame individual, apparently the chief 
mourner, carrying the dead man’s hat on a 
stick. The crowd opened right and left to let 
the procession pass, and our friends came full 
upon it. 

Dent and Twombly turned away, sickened 
by the spectacle. Nevins looked on with an 
expression of half-stimulated curiosity, and 
stroked his long, yellow beard. 

“ And this is Sunday,” thought John Dent. 
“ In River mouth, the old sexton is tolling the 
bell for the afternoon service; Uncle Dent and 
my little girl are sitting in the high-backed 
wall-pew, — I can see them now! Uncle Dent 
preparing to go to sleep, Prue looking like a 
rose, and Parson Wibird, God bless his old 
white head! going up the pulpit stairs in .his 
best coat shiny at the seams. Outside are the 
great silver poplars, and the quiet street, and 
the sunshine like a blessing falling over 
all! ” 

The close atmosphere of the camp stifled 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


117 


him as he conjured up this picture. He longed 
to be alone, and, dropping silently behind his 
companions, wandered off beyond the last row 
of wakiups and out into the deserted ravine. 

There he sat down under a ledge, and 
with his elbows resting on his knees, dreamed 
of the pleasant town by the sea, of Prudence 
and his uncle, and the old minister in Horse¬ 
shoe Lane. Presently he took from his pocket- 
book a knot of withered flowers and leaves; 
these he spread in the palm of his hand with 
great care, and held for half an hour or more, 
looking at them from time to time in a way 
that seemed idiotic to a solitary gentleman in 
a slouched hat and blanket-overcoat who was 
digging in a pit across the gully. What slight 
things will sometimes entertain a man when 
he is alone! This handful of faded fuchsia 
blossoms made John Dent forget the thousands 
of weary miles that stretched between him and 
New England; holding it so, in his palm, it 
bore him through the air back to the little 
Yankee seaport as if it had been Fortunatus’s 
magic cap. 

It was sunset when Dent sauntered pensively 


118 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


into camp, meeting Twombly and Nevins on 
the outskirts, looking for him. 

“Jack!” cried Twombly, “you have given 
me such a turn! It really is n t safe in this 
place for a fellow to go off mooning by him¬ 
self. What on earth have you been doing ? ” 

“Something quite unusual, Joseph, — I’ve 
been thinking.” 

« Homesick, eh ? ” said Nevins. 

“ Just a little.” 

Then they walked on in silence. Nevins 
stopped abruptly. 

“What is that?” 

“ A bit of rock I picked up out yonder; say 
what it is yourself.” And Dent tossed the frag¬ 
ment to Nevins, who caught it deftly. 

“ Pyrites,” said Nevins, flinging it away con¬ 
temptuously. “ Come and have some supper.” 

The instant they were inside the tent Nev¬ 
ins laid his hand on Dent’s shoulder. 

“Do you happen to remember the spot where 
you picked up that — bit of rock?” 

“ Yes, why ? ” 

“ Nothing, — only it was as fine a specimen 
of silver as we shall be likely to see.” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


119 


“ Silver!” shouted John Dent, “ and you 
threw it away! ” 

“ I ’ll go get it directly, if you ’ll be quiet. 
Did you see those two fellows watching us? 
It behooves a man here to keep his eye open 
on the Sabbath-day.” 

He was a character, this Nevins, in his way, 
though it would be difficult perhaps to state 
what his special way was. In the gulches, 
with pick and spade, he was simply a miner 
who knew his business thoroughly; on horse¬ 
back he became a part of the horse like a Co¬ 
manche ; when a question in science or litera¬ 
ture came up, as sometimes happened between 
him and Dent, he talked like a man who had 
read and thought. “ Nevins has apparently 
received a collegiate education,” John Dent 
writes in the diary, “ and is certainly a gen¬ 
tleman, though what it is that constitutes a 
gentleman is an open question. It is not cul¬ 
ture, for I have known ignorant men who 
were gentlemen, and learned scholars who were 
not; it is not money, nor grace, nor goodness, 
nor station. It is something indefinable, like 
poetry, and Nevins has it.” 


120 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


From the hour they met him at Salt Lake 
City, he had been a puzzle to the two New- 
Englanders; his talents and bearing were so 
out of keeping with his circumstances. But, 
as for that matter, so were John Dent’s. Nev- 
ins was candor itself, and if he said little of 
his past life, he did not hesitate to speak of it, 
and seemed to have nothing to conceal. One 
fact was clear to both our Rivermouth friends, 
— Nevins was worth his weight in gold to 
them. 

The piece of rock that John Dent had 
picked up on the mountain-side was, in fact, 
a fragment of silver-hearing quartz, — the zig¬ 
zag thread of blue which ran like a vein across 
the broken edge betrayed its quality to Nevins 
at a glance. 

A week after this it was noised through 
Red Rock that a party from New England had 
struck a silver lode of surprising richness far¬ 
ther up the valley. That night John Dent 
wrote a long letter to Prudence. Three nights 
afterwards the Road Agents overhauled the 
Walla Walla Express, and the gutted mail-bag 
was thrown into a swamp. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


121 


Perhaps there was more truth than jest in 
Mr. Dent’s picture of the Bannock chieftains 
puzzling over the rhetoric of Jack’s epistle. 

John Dent’s visions of wealth would have 
been realized in a few months, but unfortu¬ 
nately the silver lode, as if repenting its burst 
of generosity, abruptly turned coy, and refused 
to lavish any more favors. Just when their 
shaft was piercing deeper and deeper into the 
earth, and their rock growing richer and richer, 
— just as they had fallen into a haughty habit 
of looking upon each other as millionnaires,— 
the lode began to narrow. It was six feet 
wide when it began to narrow; from that 
point it narrowed relentlessly day by day for 
a fortnight, and then was a thin seam like a 
knife-blade, — then “ pinched out ” and utterly 
disappeared. After four weeks of drifting, and 
shafting, and all manner of prospecting, they 
failed to find it again, and gave up. Some 
said it was only a rich “ chamber ” ; some said 
it was one of those treacherous “ pockets ” ; and 
some said it was a good “ chimney,” and was 
down there yet, somewhere: but whatever its 
name or its nature might be, Dent, Kevins, and 


6 


122 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


Twombly recognized the fact that it had got 
away from them, and that was the main griev¬ 
ance. 

“ Anyhow, we have made a fair haul,” re¬ 
marked Nevins, “ thanks to you, Jack, for it 
was you who lighted on the tiling.” 

“ My luck is your luck and Twombly’s,” 
Dent replied. 

They had, as Nevins stated, made a fair 
haul. They had managed to get out close 
upon a thousand tons of forty-dollar rock be¬ 
fore the calamity came, and after all expenses 
of mining and crushing were paid, Ihey found 
themselves nearly thirty thousand dollars in 
pocket. 

Their pile was so large now,—they had re¬ 
duced it to greenbacks which they concealed 
on the premises, — and its reputation so much 
exaggerated, that they took turns in guarding 
the tent, only two going to work at a time. 
The presence of thieves in the camp had been 
successfully demonstrated within the month, 
and the fear of being robbed settled upon 
them like a nightmare. Dent had another ap¬ 
prehension, the coming of the cold season. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


123 


Nevins reassured him on that point. Though 
the winter was severe in Montana, they were in 
a sheltered valley; at the worst there would be 
only a few weeks when they could not work. 

The silver exhausted, they fell to prospect¬ 
ing. After varying fortunes for a fortnight, 
they had another find, Twombly being the in¬ 
voluntary Columbus. It was gold on this oc¬ 
casion, and though it did not yield so bounte¬ 
ously as the silver lode, it panned out hand¬ 
somely. 

So the weeks wore away, and the young men 
saw their store steadily increasing day by day. 
It was heart-breaking work sometimes, and 
back-breaking work always; but it was the 
kind of work that makes a man willing to 
have his back, if not his heart, broken. 

The winter which Dent had looked forward 
to so apprehensively was over, and had been 
propitious to the gold-hunters. Spring-time 
again filled the valley to the very brim with 
color and perfume, as a goblet is filled with 
wine. Then the long summer set in. 

All this while John Dent had refrained from 


124 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


writing home; it was his design to take Pru¬ 
dence and his uncle by surprise, .by walking 
unheralded into Willowbrook some happy day, 
with his treasures. 

Those treasures had become a heavy care to 
the young men. “We keep the dust” — I am 
quoting from the journal — “in a stout candle- 
box set into the earth at the foot of the tent- 
pole, and one of us lies across it at night. 
There have been two attempts to rob us. The 
other night Joe turned over in his sleep, and 
found himself clutching a man by the leg. 
An empty boot was left in his hand, and a 
black figure darted out of the tent. There 
was a search the next morning for that 
other boot. There were plenty of men with 
two boots, and not a few with none at all; 
but the man with one boot was wanting, and 
well for him! If he had been caught it would 
have been death on the spot; the blackest 
scoundrels in camp would have assisted at his 
execution, for there ’s nothing so disgusts 
knaves as a crime of this sort, — when they 
have n’t a finger in it themselves.” 

The morning after this attempt at burglary, 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


125 


— it was the second, — the following conversa¬ 
tion took place: — 

“ It will never do for us to keep all this 
dust here,” said Nevins ; “ we can’t hide it as 
cunningly as we do the greenbacks.” 

“ What can we do with it ? ” asked John 
Dent. 

“ There’s an agent here of Tileston & Co.’s 
who will give us drafts on Salt Lake City, or 
turn it into bank-notes at a Jewish discount.” 

Dent and Twombly preferred the bank-notes. 

“ Drafts would be safer,” suggested Nevins. 

“ Suppose Tileston & Co. should fail ? ” 

“ That is true, again,” observed Nevins. 

The bank-notes were decided on, and forty- 
five slips of crisp paper in all, each with an 
adorable M on it, were shut up in a leather 
pocket-book, which they buried in the middle 
of the tent, piling their saddles over the hid¬ 
ing-place. 

They had now been nearly twelve months 
at the diggings, and John Dent’s share in the 
property reached five figures. It was not the 
wealth of his dreams; every day in Wall Street 
men make three times as much by a scratch 


126 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


of the pen ; but it was enough to set him on 
his feet. With fifteen thousand dollars in his 
pocket he could ask Prudence Palfrey to marry 
him. Red Rock was overrun, and the supply 
of metal giving out. If he remained without 
lighting on fresh finds, what he had would 
melt away like snow in the March sunshine. 
Was it worth while to tempt fortune further ? 
was it likely that two such golden windfalls 
would happen to the same mortal ? He put 
these questions to Nevins and Twombly, who 
were aware of the stress that drew him to 
New England. They knew his love-affair by 
heart, and had even seen a certain small pho¬ 
tograph which John Dent had brought with 
him from Rivermouth. 

Nevins declared his own intention to hold 
on by Red Rock. Twombly was for instantly 
returning home. With fifteen thousand dollars 
in the Nautilus Bank at Rivermouth, he would 
snap his fingers at Count Monte Cristo him¬ 
self, who, by the way, was as real a personage 
to Twombly as John Jacob Astor. The two 
New England men decided to join the next 
large party that started for the East. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


127 


The incalculable sums which our friends were 
imagined to have accumulated rendered their 
position critical. They took turns regularly on 
the night-watch now, and waited with increas¬ 
ing apprehension and impatience for the mak¬ 
ing up of a train to cross the mountains. 

Red Rock had not improved with time. It 
seethed and bubbled, like a witch’s caldron, 
with all evil passions. Men who might have 
been decently honest if they had been decently 
fortunate, turned knaves. Crowds of success¬ 
ful diggers had already shaken the gold-dust 
from their feet and departed ; only the disso¬ 
lute and the vicious remained, with here and 
there a luckless devil who could not get away. 
The new-comers, and there were throngs of 
them, were of the worst description. Every 
man carried his life in his hand, and did not 
seem to value it highly. It was suicide to 
stray beyond the limits of the town after dusk. 
Tents were plundered every night. Now, though 
murder did not shock the nerves of this com¬ 
munity, the thieving did. An attempt was made 
by indignant citizens of Red Rock to put a 
stop to that. They went so far as to suspend 


128 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


from the bough of a butternut-tree one of their 
most influential townsmen, a gentleman known 
as the Great American Pie-Eater (on account 
of certain gastronomic feats performed at Salt 
Lake City), but the proceeding met with so 
little popular favor, that the culprit was taken 
down and resuscitated and invited by his exe¬ 
cutioners to stand drinks all round at Gal¬ 
lagher’s bar, — which he did. 

When the Vigilantes sprung into existence, 
they managed these things differently in Mon¬ 
tana : they did n’t take their man down so 
soon, for one thing. 

“ If we had been there by ourselves,” said 
Joseph Twombly, describing Red Rock at this 
period, “ we’d have been murdered in less than 
a week.” But there was, it seemed, some¬ 
thing about Nevins that lia(J a depressing effect 
upon the spirits of sundry volatile gentlemen in 
camp. 

One morning just before daybreak, John 
Dent awoke suddenly and sat up in his blan¬ 
kets, trembling from head to foot. At what he 
did not know. He had not been dreaming, 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


129 


and it was not a noise that had broken his 
sleep. He looked about him; every object 
stood out clearly in the twilight; Twombly lay 
snoring in his shake-down, but Nevins, whose 
watch it was, was not in the tent. Dent was 
somehow struck cold by that. He rolled out 
of the blankets, and crawling over to the spot 
where the money was hidden, felt for it under 
the saddles. The earth around the place had 
been newly turned up, and the pocket-book 
was gone ! 

The pocket-book was gone, and one of the 
three saddles — Nevins’s— was missing. The 
story told itself. The outcries of the two men 
brought a crowd of diggers to the tent. 

“We have been robbed by our partner,’’ 
cried Twombly, picking up a saddle by the 
stirrup-strap and hurrying out to the corral 
for his horse. 

John Dent lay on the ground with his finger¬ 
nails buried in the loose earth near the empty 
hole. A couple of worthies, half roughly and 
half compassionately, set him upon his feet. 

“ Do you care to know who that mate of 
yours was ? ” 


6 * 


i 


130 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


The speaker was a gaunt, sunburnt man, 
with deer-skin leggins, fringed at the seams 
and gathered at the waist by a U. S. belt, from 
which hung the inevitable bowie-knife and re¬ 
volver. Dent looked at him stupidly, and dimly 
recognized one of the two miners who had dis¬ 
puted the claim with Nevins that first after¬ 
noon in camp. 

“ I knew he’d levant with the pile, some day. 
But I did n’t like to let on, for fear of mis¬ 
takes. I thought, maybe, you other two was 
the same kind. I knew that man in Tuolumne 
County. He’s a devil. He’s the only man 
breathing I’m afraid of. No, I don’t mind 
allowing I’m afraid of him. There’s some¬ 
thing about him, when I think of it, — a sort 
of cold cheek, — so that I’d rather meet a Ban¬ 
nock war-party in a narrer gully than have 
any unpleasantness with that man. His true 
name was n’t Dick King, I reckon, because he 
said it was. Cool Dick was what they called 
him in Tuolumne County in ’56.” 

Several ears in the crowd pricked up at the 
words Cool Dick. It was a pseudonyme rather 
well known on the Pacific slope. John Dent 
had recovered his senses by this. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


131 


“ Are there any true lads here,” he cried, 
“ that will go with me to bring back that 
thief?” 

A dozen volunteered at once, and half an 
hour later twenty armed men galloped out of 
Red Rock Canon. 

They returned with jaded horses, at sunset, 
without having struck the trail of either 
Twombly or Nevins. The next day, at noon, 
Twombly himself rode into camp and dropped 
heavily out of the saddle at the door of the 
tent. He had a charge of buck-shot in his leg. 
Some one had fired on him from the chaparral 
near Big Hole Ranch. It was not Nevins, 
for he had no gun, so far as known; probably 
some confederate of his. 

And this was the end of it. This was the 
result of their twelve months’ hardship and in¬ 
dustry and pluck and endurance. 

Then John Dent wrote that letter to Pru¬ 
dence, which she laid away in the drawer, tell¬ 
ing her the story, not as I have told it, tamely 
and at second-hand, but with fire and tears. 
Then, in a few weeks, came Joseph Twombly, 
limping back into Rivermouth, alone. There 


132 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


were no more El Dorados for him, poor knight; 
he was lamed for life, or he would never have 
deserted his comrade. John Dent himself had 
gone off, Twombly did not know where; but 
to California, he fancied, in search of George 
Nevins. 

And this was the end of it for Prudence, 
too. She shut up the letter and her dream in 
the writing-desk with the brass clamps. It was 
a year before she could read the letter without 
a recurrence of the old poignant pain. At the 
end of another twelvemonth, when she un¬ 
folded the pages, the words wore a strange, 
faded look, as if they had been written by one 
long since dead, and dealt only with dimly re¬ 
membered events and persons,— so far off 
seemed that summer morning when she first 
read them. She shed no tears now, but held 
the letter in her hand thoughtfully. 

It was nearly three years since John Dent 
went away from Rivermouth, and nothing more 
had been heard of him. A silence like and 
unlike that of the grave had gathered about his 
name. Life at Willowbrook flowed back into 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


133 


its accustomed channels. Mr. Dent had dis¬ 
posed of the skeleton effectively and forever, 
and Prudence had passed into the early sum¬ 
mer of her womanhood. It was at this point 
my chronicle began. 

This was the situation — to borrow a tech¬ 
nical term from dramatic art — when the con¬ 
gregation of the Old Brick Church, after much 
ruffling of parochial plumage, resolved to re¬ 
lieve Parson Wibird Hawkins of his pastorate. 


134 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


vm. 

The Parson’s Last Text. 

T HIS brings my story again to that after¬ 
noon in May, when Prudence Palfrey made 
her appearance at the cottage in Horseshoe 
Lane, and was solicited by Salome to speak to 
the parson, who had locked himself in the little 
room after the departure of the two deacons. 

It was with an inexplicable sense of uneasi¬ 
ness that Prudence crossed the library, and 
knocked softly on the panel of the inner door. 
The parson did not seem to hear the summons; 
at all events, he paid no attention to it, and 
Prudence knocked again. 

“ He’s gittin’ the least bit hard of hearin’, 
pore soul,” said Salome. “ Mebbe he heard 
that, though,” she added, more cautiously, “ for 
he always hears when you don’t s’pose he will. 
Do jest speak to him, honey; he ’ll know your 
vice in a minit.” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


135 


Prudence put her lips down to the key-hole 
and called, “Parson Wibird! — it’s Prue,— 
won’t you speak to me?” 

He made no response to this, and in the 
silence that ensued, broken only by the quick 
respiration of the two women, there was no 
sound as if he were preparing to undo the 
fastenings. Prudence rose up with a half- 
frightened expression on her countenance and 
looked at Salome. 

“ What can have happened ? ” she said hur¬ 
riedly. 

u Lord o’ mercy knows,” replied Salome, 
catching Prue’s alarm. “Don’t stare at me 
in secli a way, dear; I’m as nervous as 
nuthin’.” 

“Are you sure he is there?” 

“ Sartin. I all but see him goin’ in, an’ I 
haven’t ben out of the room sence. He must 
be there.” 

“ Is he subject to vertigo, ever ? ” 

“ Dunno,” said Salome, doubtfully. 

“ I mean, does he ever faint ? ” 

« He did have a cur’ous sort of spell two or 
three weeks ago, an’ Dr. Theophilus give him 
some med’cine for it.” 


136 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


“ He lias fainted, then! Get a candle — 
quick. Stop, Salome, I ’ll go with you.” 

Prudence was afraid to remain in the library 
alone. She was impressed by some impalpable 
presence in the half darkness. The shadows 
huddled together in the corners. The long 
rows of books in their time-stained leather 
bindings looked down sombrely from the 
shelves. On the table was an open volume, 
with an ivory paper-cutter upon it, which he 
had been reading. His frayed dressing-gown 
lay across a chair in front of the table. It 
seemed like some weird, collapsed figure, lying 
there. All the familiar objects in the room 
had turned strange and woe-begone in the twi¬ 
light. Prudence would not have been left 
alone for the world. 

The two went out together for the candle, 
which Salome with a trembling hand lighted 
at the kitchen stove. Then they flitted back 
to the library silently, with white sharp faces, 
like ghosts. 

44 What shall we do ? ” 

44 We must break in the door,” said Pru¬ 
dence under her breath. 44 You hold the 
candle.” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


137 


She placed her knee against the lower panel 
and pressed with all her strength. The lock 
was old and rusty, and the screws worked 
loosely in the worm-eaten wood-work. The 
door yielded at the second pressure and flew 
open, with a shower of fine dust sifting down 
from the lintel. 

The girl retreated a step or two, and shad¬ 
ing her eyes with the palm of her hand, 
peered into the darkened space. 

Nothing was distinct at first, but as Salome 
raised the light above Prue’s head, the figure 
of the parson suddenly took shape against the 
gloom. 

He was sitting in an old-fashioned arm¬ 
chair, with his serene face bent over a great 
Bible covered with green baize, which he held 
on his knees. His left arm hung idly at his 
side, and the forefinger of his right hand 
rested lightly on the middle of the page, as if 
slumber had overtaken him so, reading. 

“ Laws o’ mercy, if the parson has n’t gone 
to sleep! ” exclaimed Salome, stepping into the 
small compartment. 

“ Asleep! ” repeated Prudence, the reassured 
color returning to her cheek. 


138 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


Salome laid her hand on the parson’s arm, 
and then passed it quickly over his forehead. 

“He’s dead! ” cried Salome, dropping the 
candlestick. 

The hour-hand of the cuckoo-clock in the 
hall at Willowbrook pointed at seven ; the toy 
bird popped out on the narrow ledge in front 
of the carved Swiss cottage, shook seven flute¬ 
like notes into the air, popped in again hastily, 
and the little door went to with a spiteful 
snap. 

Mr. Dent glanced at the timepiece over the 
fireplace in the sitting-room, and wondered 
what was detaining Prue. She had gone to 
town on a shopping expedition shortly after 
dinner, and here it was an hour and a half 
past tea-time. Fanny had brought in the tea- 
urn and carried it off again. It was as if the 
sun-dial had forgotten to mark the movements 
of the sun; the household set its clocks by 
Prudence. 

For the last hour or two Mr. Dent had been 
lounging restlessly in the sitting-room, now 
snatching up a book and trying to read, now 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


139 


looking out on the lawn, and now vigorously 
poking the coals in the grate, for it was one 
of those brisk days which make a fire com¬ 
fortable in our delusive New England May. 

Mr. Dent was revolving in his mind how he 
should break to Prudence the intelligence of 
Parson Hawkins’s dismissal, and more espe¬ 
cially in what terms he should confess his 
own part in the transaction. “ What will Prue 
say ? ” was a question he put to himself a 
dozen times without eliciting a satisfactory re¬ 
ply. He was a little afraid of Prudence, — he 
had that tender awe of her with which a pure 
woman inspires most men. He could imagine 
what she would have said three years ago; but 
she had altered in many respects since then ; 
she had grown quieter and less impulsive. That 
one flurry of passion in which she had con¬ 
fessed her love for John Dent did not seem 
credible to her guardian as he looked back to 
it. As a matter of course, she would be indig¬ 
nant at the action of the deacons, and would 
probably not approve of the steps he had taken 
to bring Mr. Dillingham to Rivermouth; but 
she would not storm at him. He almost wished 


140 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


slie would storm at him, for her anger was 
not so unmanageable as the look of mute re¬ 
proach which she knew how to bring into her 
gray eyes. 

The cuckoo in the Swiss chalet had hopped 
out again on the ledge, and was just sounding 
the half-hour in his clear, business-like way, 
when Prudence opened the drawing-room door. 

“ I thought you had run off for good,” said 
Mr. Dent, rising from his chair; then he stopped 
and looked at her attentively. “ Why, Prue, 
what is the matter ? ” 

“ The parson — ” Prudence could not finish 
the sentence. The nervous strength that had 
sustained her through the recent ordeal gave 
way; she sank upon the sofa and buried her 
face in the cushions. 

“ She has heard of it already,” thought Mr. 
Dent. He crossed to the sofa and rested his 
hand softly on her shoulder. “ My dear girl, 
you must be reasonable. It had to come sooner 
or later; he could not go on preaching forever, 
you know. He is a very old man now, and 
ought to take his ease. He will be all the 
happier with the cares of the parish off his 
hands.” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


141 


“ All the happier, yes! ” 

“ And we ’ll have him up to Willowbrook 
often; he shall have a room here — ” 
Prudence lifted her face beseechingly. 

“ 0, you don’t know! you don’t know! ” 
she cried. “ He is dead! he died this after¬ 
noon, sitting in his chair. Ah! — it was so 
dreadfully sudden ! ” And Prudence covered 
her eyes with her hands as if to shut out the 
scene in the library. 

Mr. Dent was greatly shocked. He leaned 
against the mantel-piece, and stared vacantly 
at Prudence, while she related what had hap¬ 
pened at Horseshoe Lane. She had completed 
her purchases in town, and was on the way 
home when she met Miss Blydenburgli, who 
told her of the deacons’ visit to Parson Haw¬ 
kins to request his resignation. Knowing that 
the poor old man was unprepared for any such 
proposition, she had turned back and hastened 
down to the parsonage, to say and do what 
she could to comfort him in his probable dis¬ 
tress. Then she and Salome, alone there in 
the dark, had found him dead in the chair. 

Mr. Dent left his tea untasted. He had the 


142 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


horse saddled, and rode over to town. He was 
greatly shocked. And Deacon Zeb Twombly, 
that night, as he stood for a moment beside 
the cradle in which the little ewe-lamb lay 
nestled in its blankets, was a miserable man. 
He crept off to the spare room in the attic — 
where he was undergoing a temporary but not 
unprecedented exile — with the conviction that 
he was little better than a murderer. 

“ I hope Parson Wibird will forgive me my 
share in the business,” murmured the deacon, 
blowing out the candle; then he lingered by 
the window dejectedly. It was a dreamy May 
night; the air, though chilly, was full of the 
odors of spring, and the mysterious blue spaces 
above were sown thick with stars. “ P’rhaps 
he knows all up there,” he said, lifting his eyes 
reverently, “ an’ how it went agin me to give 
him any pain. I wonder how brother Wendell 
feels about it.” 

Deacon Wendell, fortunately or unfortunately, 
as the case may be, was of that tougher fibre 
out of which the strong sons of the world are 
made. He had performed the duty that de¬ 
volved upon him, as he had performed other 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


143 


unpleasant duties, having been sheriff once, and 
there was nothing to be said. He was sorry 
the parson died just as he did. “ Looks as 
though he done it on purpose to spite us,” 
reflected Deacon Wendell. Perhaps his chief 
emotion when lie first heard the news — it was 
all over Rivermoutli now — was an ill-defined 
feeling of resentment against Parson Wibird 
for having cut up rough. 

The effect produced on Mr. Dent was more 
complex. Though neither so callous as Dea¬ 
con Wendell nor so soft-hearted as Deacon 
Twombly, he shared to some extent the feel¬ 
ings of both. He keenly regretted the death 
of the old parson, and particularly the manner 
of it. It was an unlucky coincidence, — he 
could not look upon it as anything more than 
a coincidence, — and would give rise to much 
disagreeable gossip. If it had happened a 
month or two before, or a month or two later, 
he would have been sorry, as anybody is sorry 
when anybody dies; but he would not have 
been shocked. He wished he had not been 
quite so warm in advocating the desirableness 
of Mr. Dillingham. If he could have foreseen 


144 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


the present catastrophe, he would have thrust 
his hand into the flames rather than move in 
the matter. 

But what was done was done; and as he 
urged the mare across the long wooden bridge 
which ended among the crumbling wharves and 
shabby warehouses of Market Street, he trusted 
something would transpire showing that the 
parson’s death was the result of natural causes 
and in no degree to be attributed to — to what 
had probably caused it. 

There was an unusual glimmer and moving 
of lights in the windows of the parsonage, and 
a mysterious coming and going of shadows on 
the brown Holland shades, as Mr. Dent turned 
into Horseshoe Lane. He was within a dozen 
rods of the cottage, when the gate creaked on its 
hinges and Dr. Theopliilus Tredick passed out, 
walking off rapidly in an opposite direction. 

Mr. Dent pushed on after the doctor, and 
overtook him at the doorstep of a neighboring 
house. 

“ A moment, doctor,” said Mr. Dent, leaning 
over the horse’s neck. “ Has there been an 
inquest ? ” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


145 


“ Yes; we have just finished the examina¬ 
tion.” 

“ Well ? ” 

“ Paralysis.” 

“ Attributable to any sudden mental excite¬ 
ment or anything of that nature? You know 
he had a conversation on church affairs with 
the deacons this afternoon; could that have 
affected him in any way ? ” Mr. Dent put the 
query anxiously. 

“ It would be difficult to say,” replied the 
doctor. “ It is open to conjecture of course; 
but at the worst it could only have hastened 
what was inevitable. I am not prepared to 
affirm that it hastened it; in fact, I do not 
think it did.” 

“ I do not entirely catch your meaning, 
doctor,” Mr. Dent said. 

“ I mean that Parson Hawkins had had two 
slight strokes of paralysis previously ; one last 
winter and the second three weeks ago. I was 
apprehensive that the third would terminate 
fatally.” 

“ I never heard of that.” 

“ No one knew of it, I think; not even Mrs. 

7 * 


146 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


Pinder, the housekeeper. It was at his own 
urgent request I kept the matter secret. At the 
time of the occurrence of the second attack I 
had a long talk with our friend, and advised 
him strongly to give up work altogether; find¬ 
ing him obstinate on that point, I urged him 
to have an assistant. I warned him plainly 
that he might be taken ill at any moment in 
the pulpit. He declared that that was the 
place of all others where he could wish to die; 
but he promised to consider my suggestion of 
an associate minister.” 

“ Which he never did.” 

“ For the last three Sundays,” continued the 
doctor, “ I have gone to church expecting to 
see him drop down in the pulpit in the midst 
of the service. He was aware of his condi¬ 
tion, and not at all alarmed by it. Though he 
overrated his strength, and had some odd no¬ 
tions of duty, — he did have some odd notions, 
our estimable old friend, — he was a man of 
great clear sense, and I do not believe the re¬ 
cent action of the parish affected him in the 
manner or to the extent idle people will sup¬ 
pose. What has happened would probably have 
happened in any case.” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


147 


Dr. Tredick’s statement lifted a weight from 
Mr. Dent’s bosom, and from Deacon Twombly’s 
when he heard of it; though there were numer¬ 
ous persons in the town who did not hesitate 
to assert that the parson’s dismissal killed him. 
To look on the darkest side of a picture is in 
strict keeping with the local spirit; for River- 
mouth, in its shortcomings and in its uncom¬ 
promising virtues, is nothing if not Puritan. 

“ Might as well have took a muskit and shot 
the ole man,” observed Mr. Wiggins. 

“ Capital punishment ought to be abolished 
in New Hampshire,” said ex-postmaster Snell- 
ing, “ if they don’t hang Deacon Wendell and 
the rest of ’em.” 

Mr. Snelling was not naturally a sanguinary 
person, but he had been superseded in the post- 
office the year before by Deacon Wendell, and 
flesh is flesh. 

The event was the only topic discussed for 
the next ten days. Parson Wibird had so long 
been one of the features of the place, that he 
seemed a permanence, like the brick church 
itself, or the post-office with its granite faqade. 
If either of these had been spirited off over- 


148 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


night, the surprise and the shock could not 
have been more wide-spread. That tall, stoop¬ 
ing figure, clad always in a rusty suit of black, 
was as familiar an object on the main street as 
the swinging sign of the Old Bell Tavern. 
There were grandfathers and grandmothers 
who, as boys and girls, remembered Parson 
Wibird when he looked neither older nor 
younger than he did that day lying in the 
coffin, — nay, not so young, for the deep wrin¬ 
kles and scars of time had faded out of the 
kindly old face, and the radiance of heavenly 
youth rested upon it. 

There was one circumstance connected with 
the old minister’s death that naturally made a 
deeper impression than any other. When Sa¬ 
lome summoned the neighbors, that night, they 
found the parson with the Bible lying open be¬ 
fore him, and one finger resting upon the page 
as if directing attention to a particular passage. 
There was something startlingly life-like and 
imperative in the unconscious pointing of that 
withered forefinger, and those who peered 
hastily over the slanted shoulder and read the 
verse indicated never forgot it. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


149 


“ Thet was th’ parson’s las’ tex’,” said Uncle 
Jedd, leaning on his spade worn bright with oh! 
so many graves: “ Well done, thou good an’ 
faithful servant, enter thou inter th’ joy of thy 
Lord!” 


150 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


IX. 

A Will, and the Way of it. 

I T was early in the forenoon, six or seven 
days after the funeral of the parson, that 
Mr. Dent, who had left the house an hour be¬ 
fore to take the morning train for Boston, 
returned hurriedly to Willowbrook, and, cap¬ 
turing Fanny the housemaid, with broom and 
dust-pan in the front hall, despatched her to 
her mistress. 

“ Tell Miss Prudence I want to speak with 
her a moment in the library.” 

This change in her guardian’s purpose, and 
his message, which was in itself something out 
of the ordinary way, filled Prudence with won¬ 
der. She had packed Mr. Dent’s valise for an 
absence of several days, and she knew it was 
no trivial circumstance that had made him re¬ 
linquish or postpone the journey in question. 
What could it be? 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


151 


She was arranging the house-plants in the 
bay-window room, as it was called, when Fanny 
delivered Mr. Dent’s message. 

“ He must have missed the train,” said Pru¬ 
dence to herself. But Mr. Dent had gone to 
town an hour earlier than was necessary to 
catch the express. “ Or perhaps Mr. Dilling¬ 
ham has written that he is not coming, after 
all.” Suddenly an idea flashed upon Prudence 
and nearly caused her to drop the pot of jon¬ 
quils which she was in the act of lifting from 
the flower-stand. 

“ He has heard from John Dent!” 

When a friend dies and is buried, there’s 
an end of him. We miss him for a space out 
of our daily existence; we mourn for him by 
degrees that become mercifully less; we cling 
to the blessed hope that we shall be reunited 
in some more perfect sphere; but so far as 
this earth is concerned, there’s an end of him. 
However near and dear he was, the time ar¬ 
rives when he does not form a part of our daily 
thought; he ceases to be even an abstraction. 
We go no more with flowers and tears into 
the quiet cemetery; only the rain and the snow- 


152 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


flakes fall there; we leave it for the fingers of 
spring to deck the neglected mound. 

But when our friend vanishes unaccountably 
in the midst of a crowded city, or goes off on 
a sea-voyage and is never heard of again, his 
memory has a singular tenacity. He may he 
to all intents and purposes dead to us, but we 
have not lost him. The ring of the door-bell 
at midnight may be his ring; the approaching 
footstep may be his footstep; the unexpected 
letter with foreign postmarks may be from his 
hand. He haunts us as the dead never can. 

The woman whose husband died last night 
may marry again within a lustre of months. 
Do you suppose a week passes by when the 
woman whose husband disappeared mysteriously 
ten years ago does not think of him? There 
are moments when the opening of a door must 
startle her. 

There is no real absence but death. 

For nearly three years, for two years and a 
half, to be precise, the shadow of John Dent 
had haunted Prudence more or less, — the 
chance of tidings from him, the possibility of 
his emerging suddenly from the darkness that 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


153 


shrouded him and his movements, had been in 
her thought almost constantly. Until she saw 
him once more or knew that he was dead, she 
was not to be relieved of this sense of expect¬ 
ancy. It was disassociated with any idea or 
desire that he would claim her love; he had 
surrendered that; he had written her that he 
should never set foot in Rivermouth again; he 
was a wrecked man. It was not for Prudence 
to cling to a hope which he had thrown over, 
however unwisely or weakly. She would have 
waited for him loyally all her life; his misfor¬ 
tune would have linked her closer to him ; but 
he had not asked her to wait, or to share the 
misfortune ; he had given her up, and the ob¬ 
vious thing for Prudence had been to forget 
him. In a circumscribed life like hers, how 
was it possible for her to forget that she had 
loved and been loved ? She taught herself to 
look upon his visit to Willowbrook, and what 
had subsequently occurred, as a midsummer’s 
day-dream; but beyond that she had not been 
successful. 

John Dent’s name was seldom spoken now 
either by Prudence or her guardian; to all ap- 
7 * 


154 


PRUDENCE PALFRET. 


pearance he was obliterated from their memo¬ 
ries ; but the truth is, there was scarcely a 
month when both Prudence and Mr. Dent did 
not wonder what had become of him. “ I don’t 
believe she ever thinks of him nowadays,” re¬ 
flected Mr. Dent. “ He has quite forgotten 
him,” Prudence would say to herself. But Mr. 
Dent never took his letters from the languid 
clerk at the post-office without half expecting 
to find one from Jack; and Prudence never 
caught an expression more than usually thought¬ 
ful on her guardian’s face without fancying he 
had received news of his nephew. 

The image of John Dent rose up before Pru¬ 
dence with strange distinctness that morning 
as she stood by the bay-window, and flitted 
with singular persistence across her path on 
the way down stairs. 

Mr. Dent was seated at the library table, 
upon which were spread several legal-looking 
documents with imposing red-wax seals. His 
eyebrows were drawn together, and there was 
a perplexed look on his countenance which at 
once reassured Prudence; whatever had oc¬ 
curred, it was nothing tragic. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


155 


“We have got hold of the parson’s will at 
last,” he said, looking up as she entered the 
room. 

A will had been found the day following 
Parson Hawkins’s death, in an old hair trunk 
in which he kept private papers; but Mr. Jar¬ 
vis, the attorney, declared that a later testa¬ 
ment had been executed, different in tenor 
from this, which was dated fifteen years back. 
No such document was forthcoming, however, 
after a most rigorous search among the old 
clergyman’s manuscripts. Mr. Jarvis had 
drawn up the paper himself ten months be¬ 
fore, and was bent on finding it. 

“ My client was queer in such matters,” he 
said. “ He would keep scraps of verse and 
paragraphs cut from newspapers in his strong¬ 
box at the bank, and have bonds and leases 
kicking around the library as if they were 
worthless. You may depend upon it, he stuck 
this will away in some corner, and forgot it.” 

On the sixth or seventh day, when the be¬ 
lief was become general that the parson had 
destroyed it, the later will was discovered shut 
up in a copy of the London folio edition of Cot- 


156 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


ton Mather’s “ Magnalia,” on a shelf in the 
little room where the parson had died. 

“ He has left Salome a life-interest in the 
cottage and an animal sum for her support, to 
revert at her death to the main estate.” 

“ I am glad of that,” said Prudence. “ Poor 
Salome! ” 

“ And the residue of the property,” con¬ 
tinued Mr. Dent, “ after deducting a few minor 
bequests, — how do you think he has disposed 
of that ? ” 

“I am sure I cannot imagine. He had no 
near relatives. To the Sunday school, per¬ 
haps.” 

“ No.” 

“ To the Brick Church, then.” 

“ No.” 

“ To the Mariner’s Home.” 

“ No; the Mariner’s Home gets two thou¬ 
sand dollars, though.” 

“ Then I cannot guess.” 

“ He leaves it to John Dent,” said her guar¬ 
dian, with a curious smile, watching Prudence 
narrowly as he spoke the words. 

“ Is n’t that rather singular ? ” said Pru¬ 
dence, without ruffling a feather. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


157 


“ She does n’t care the snap of her finger for 
him, that is certain,” was Mr. Dent’s internal 
comment. — “ No, not singular. My brother 
Benjamin and Parson Hawkins were close 
friends for many years. I believe Benjamin 
helped him in some money affair when they 
w'ere at college together, and his gratitude is 
not unnatural, — assuming that gratitude is a 
great deal more common than it is. But the 
injunction laid upon the executors — and I am 
one — is singular. The executors are not to 
make public the contents of the will, and Jack 
is not to be informed of his inheritance — pro¬ 
vided we could find him — until a year after 
the death of the testator.” 

“ What a strange provision! ” 

“ The parson explains it by saying that every 
man ought to earn his own living; that sudden 
wealth is frequently the worst misfortune that 
can befall a young man, and he wishes his 
friend’s son to rely on his own exertions for a 
while, ‘in order’ — and these are the parson’s 
very words — 6 that he may learn to estimate 
riches at their proper value, and support pros¬ 
perity without arrogance.’ All of which is 


158 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


sensible enough, quite in the style of your 
friend Dr. Johnson, but rather odd on the 
whole. Indeed, the will is as angular as one 
of the parson’s sermons. Jarvis drew it up, 
but he could not have composed a sentence of 
it to save him. Any way, Jack falls heir to a 
round sum, — about eighty thousand dollars, not 
including the house and lot in Horseshoe 
Lane.” 

44 And perhaps at this moment he is without 
bread to eat, or a roof to shelter him! ” 

“ Most likely. He has not condescended to 
let his friends know what he has done with 
himself. But as you said long ago, it will be 
a great thing for him; it will teach him self- 
reliance. I did n’t think then he needed any 
lessons in that branch of science; but I have 
altered my opinion. It was cowardly in Jack 
to strike his colors at the first fire. I was 
mistaken and disappointed in him. I suppose 
it is the fellow’s pride that has kept him from 
writing to me.” 

44 1 am sure something ought to be done 
about him now, uncle.” 

44 If I knew what to do. I could not tell 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


159 


him of Parson Hawkins’s will, if he were here. 
I don’t imagine an advertisement in the pa¬ 
pers would be a very tempting bait to Jack. 
Letters have no effect on him, apparently. 
When I saw you so unhap— I mean when 
we got the story of that rascally Nevins, I 
wrote Jack to come home and take a fresh 
start; offered to organize a mining company, 
make him superintendent, and go into the busi¬ 
ness in a rational manner; but he never an¬ 
swered my letter, if he got it.” 

“ That was very generous of you,” said Pru¬ 
dence, to whom this was news. 

“ I don’t like his silence. Why, it is two 
years and a half, going on three years. Some¬ 
times, you know, I fancy he has fallen in with 
that man, and come to harm. The idea may 
have passed through the parson’s mind also, 
which would account for the surprising codicil 
he added to the will.” 

The subject of the will and all connected 
with it was painful to Prudence, but she was 
instantly curious to know what this surprising 
codicil was, and said so in that involuntary 
language which belongs to expressive eyes. 


160 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


Mr. Dent took up one of the solemn-looking 
documents and glanced at the last page, then 
laid it down, then turned to it again, and re¬ 
read a certain passage deliberately, as if to 
assure himself before'he spoke. 

“In case of John Dent’s death,” he said, 
“ in case he dies within the twelve months spe¬ 
cified, the property comes to you.” 

“ No, no! it must never come to me! ” cried 
Prudence, starting from the great arm-chair in 
which she had curled herself. “ He must be 
found; whether he is told of it or not, he must 
be found! ” 

“ I think myself he ought to be looked up. 
It is ridiculous for him to be roughing it out 
there, — wherever he is, — with all this money 
coming to him in a few months. But it is not 
clear to me what can be done about it.” 

“ Cannot some one be sent to find him ? 
Joseph Twombly, for instance?” 

“ Yes, Twombly might be sent; and get 
some buckshot in that other leg, — his luck. 
He would go in a second if it was suggested; 
but Twombly has just secured a good situation 
in Chicago, — did n’t I mention it to you ? — 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


161 


and 1 am not sure I should be justified in ask' 
ing him.” 

Joseph Twombly, ex-kniglit and capitalist, 
had bowed gracefully and good-humoredly to 
fate, instead of throwing up his hands and rend¬ 
ing his garments, like other people we know of. 
For many months after his return from El Do¬ 
rado, the good knight could get nothing to do, 
and in truth he was not capable of doing much, 
on account of his wound. He lay idle around 
River mouth, to the no slight embarrassment of 
Deacon Twombly, who was not prospering in a 
worldly point of view. Ewe-lambs had become 
chronic in the deacon’s family, and he found 
himself again banished, as the reader has been 
informed, to the spare room in the attic, and a 
new lamb had come to be fed even before the 
little one of a previous season was fairly upon 
its mottled legs. It was at this time, — two 
weeks before Parson Hawkins’s fatal stroke of 
paralysis, and while Mr. Dent was urging his 
friend Dillingham to consider the Rivermouth 
proposal, — that a piece of sunny fortune fell 
to the portion of Joseph Twombly. 

Mr. Dent was not a man who unbosomed 


162 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


himself to every chance acquaintance, but he 
had been particularly communicative with Mr. 
Dillingham touching Rivermouth affairs, and 
had not left untold the history of his nephew’s 
misfortunes. I am inclined to suspect, how¬ 
ever, that Mr. Dent restricted himself to the 
financial parts of the narrative, and said noth¬ 
ing whatever of the trifling love-passage that 
had taken place between his ward and John 
Dent. It would have been hardly fair to Pru¬ 
dence to speak of that; but he talked frequently 
of his nephew, all the more frequently, per¬ 
haps, because the subject was tabooed at home. 
It chanced one evening, as the two gentlemen 
were chatting together in a private parlor at the 
Astor House, that the conversation turned on 
Twombly. 

u I am afraid Joseph is a heavy burden to 
the deacon, just now,” Mr. Dent said. “ I wish 
I could help the fellow; but every one is re¬ 
trenching on account of the troubles down 
South, and there seems to be no opening for 
Joseph.” 

“ He appears to be an estimable and faithful 
young person,” Mr. Dillingham replied, “ and I 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


163 


should take it as a favor if I might be allowed 
to join you in any plan to assist him. I have 
no business influence here, but I am confident 
that a word from me to my Chicago bankers 
would secure interest for Mr. Twombly there. 
Suppose I write to them?” 

Mr. Dillingham did write, and Messrs. Raw¬ 
lings & Sons were pleased to find a place in 
their office for a young man so highly spoken 
of by their esteemed correspondent. A few 
days afterwards Mr. Joseph Twombly, with a 
comfortable check in his pocket, was on his 
way to Chicago. 

To recall him now, and send him on a wild- 
goose chase after John Dent, was a step not to 
be taken without consideration, if at all. 

“ He is out of the question at present. Per¬ 
haps by and by, if I fail to obtain any clew to 
Jack’s whereabouts, I may be forced to make 
use of Joseph. What was the name of that 
banking firm at Salt Lake City which Jack 
mentioned in his letter? Look it up, and I 
will write to those people.” 

“ It was Tileston & Co.,” replied Prudence, 
who had an excellent memory. 


164 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


“ And I ’ll write to Jack also at Red Rock,— 
tlie rock on which he split,” supplemented Mr. 
Dent; but his little pleasantry fell cold. Pru¬ 
dence was not in a mood to encourage jests, 
and Mr. Dent withdrew crestfallen into his 
serious shell. “ Perhaps it would be advisable 
to drop him a line at San Francisco,” he said. 
“ What do you think ? ” 

Mr. Dent went to work on his letters, and 
Prudence stole off thoughtfully to the small bay- 
window room over the hall door, where she 
always did her meditating. This business of 
the will weighed heavily upon her. There was 
something chilling in the reflection that per¬ 
haps the dead man had left his money to a 
dead man, and it would thus fall to her, — an 
avalanche of clammy gold-pieces slipping through 
dead men’s fingers! She would touch none of 
it! The idea made her shiver. 

She was still sitting by the open casement, 
dismayed at the prospect, when Mr. Dent 
stepped out of the door below, a valise in his 
hand, and his spring overcoat thrown across 
one arm. 

Prudence drew back hastily, and when Mr. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


165 


Dent looked up at the window, she was not 
visible. The movement had been mechanical 
on her part, and she was instantly ashamed of 
it. Of course it was perfectly proper that her 
guardian should meet the Rev. Mr. Dillingham 
in Boston, and conduct him to Rivermouth; 
Mr. Dent was in a manner bound to so much 
courtesy; but the thought of a stranger stand¬ 
ing in the dear old parson’s pulpit brought the 
tears to Prudence’s eyes. 

“ It is very uncharitable and unchristian, I 
know,” said Prudence, watching her guardian’s 
receding figure, “but I think I shall hate the 
new minister.” 


166 


PRUDENCE PALEREY. 


X. 


The New Minister. 

K IYERMOUTH is a town where almost lit¬ 
erally nothing happens. Sometimes some¬ 
body is married, and sometimes somebody dies, 
— with surprising abruptness, as the old par¬ 
son did, for example, — and sometimes a vessel 
is blown on the rocks at the mouth of the har¬ 
bor. But of those salient tragedies and come¬ 
dies which make up the sum of life in cities, 
Rivermouth knows next to nothing. Since the 
hanging of a witch or two in the pre-revolu¬ 
tionary days, the office of sheriff there has been 
virtually a sinecure. The police-court — where 
now and then a thoughtless, light-fingered per¬ 
son is admonished of the error of his ways, 
and the one habitual drunkard is periodically 
despatched to the Town-Farm — seems almost 
like a branch of the Sunday school. The com¬ 
munity may be said to have lived for thirty 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


167 


years on a single divorce case, growing out of 
the elopement of Major Tom Deering with Mrs. 
Honoria Maddox, — to this day a perilous story 

“That matrons tell, with sharpened tongue, 

To maids with downcast eyes.” 

In default of great events, small matters rise 
to the first magnitude in Rivermouth. There 
are people there who can give you, if you chance 
to be to the manner born, the most minute par¬ 
ticulars of the career of your great-grandfather, 
and to whom what you have for dinner is far 
from being an uninteresting item. 

“ I see Capen Chris Bell at Seth Wiggins’s 
this mornin’,” says Mr. Uriah Stebbens to Mr. 
Caleb Stokels; “ he bought that great turkey 
of Seth’s, and six poun’s of steak — right off 
the tenderline. Guess he expects his brother- 
in-law’s family down from Bostin. Capen 
Chris Bell always was a good provider.” 

This piece of information lies like a live coal 
upon the brain of Mr. Stokels until, with be¬ 
coming gravity, he turns it over to some other 
inquiring neighbor. At a moderate estimate, 
not less than two thirds of the entire popula¬ 
tion of Rivermouth sit down in imagination at 


168 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


Captain Christopher Bell’s dinner-table the next 
day. 

Unless the reader is familiar with the inte¬ 
rior life of secluded New England towns like 
Rivermouth, he will find it difficult to under¬ 
stand the excitement that prevailed on the 
Sunday when the Rev. Mr. James Dillingham 
preached his first sermon in the Old Brick 
Church. Yet even a stranger, passing through 
the streets, crowded at the earliest stroke of the 
bells, — I think there is no music this side of 
heaven sweeter than the clangor of those same 
Rivermouth bells, — could not have failed to 
notice an unwonted, eager look on the faces of 
the neatly dressed throng. There was some¬ 
thing in the very atmosphere different from 
that of ordinary days. A sort of pious Fourth- 
of-July halo diffused itself through the fleecy, 
low-hanging clouds, which, with May-time capri¬ 
ciousness, broke into fine rain before the ser¬ 
vice was concluded. A circumstance in which 
Uncle Jedd detected, with microscopic eye, the 
marked disapproval of Providence. 

If such was the significance of the unheralded 
shower that drenched Rivermouth’s spring-bon- 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


169 


nets, and bedraggled alike the just and the un¬ 
just, it was not so accepted by the congrega¬ 
tion of the Old Brick Church. 

The Rev. Mr. Dillingham had achieved a sig¬ 
nal triumph, and had triumphed in the teeth 
of very serious obstacles. A small number of 
the parishioners had been against him from the 
first, and the death of Parson Hawkins had 
not only strengthened their opposition, but cre¬ 
ated a reaction among those who had insisted 
most strenuously on the removal of the old 
minister. It so chanced, then, that Mr. Dil¬ 
lingham came to face as critical and unsympa¬ 
thetic a congregation as could well be. Per¬ 
haps the only really impartial listeners among 
his audience were those belonging to other par¬ 
ishes ; for it was a noticeable fact that all the 
other churches in town were nearly empty on 
this occasion. The Rev. Josiah Jones, who had 
not spared himself in preparing his sermon for 
that forenoon, saw with ill-concealed distaste 
that the larger portion of his flock had strayed 
into the neighboring pasture. 

If Mr. Dillingham had had an intimation of 
the actual state of things, he would perhaps not 
8 


170 


PRUDENCE PALFRET. 


have been so little self-conscious and so entirely 
composed as he appeared; but happily he had 
no suspicion of the unfriendly spirit that ani¬ 
mated the majority of his hearers. 

With a slight flush on his cheeks, which 
faded out almost immediately, Mr. Dillingham 
passed from the small room at the rear of the 
church, and ascended the pulpit stairs, — a slim 
young man, nearly six feet in height, with 
gentle blue eyes, and long hair of a dull gold 
color, which he wore brushed behind his ears. 
It was not a remarkably strong face, Mr. Dil¬ 
lingham’s, but it was not without character. 
The firmly cut mouth and chin saved it, per¬ 
haps, from being effeminate. He was twenty- 
nine or thirty, but did not look it; his closely 
shaved face and light complexion gave him 
quite a youthful air, to one looking at him 
across the church. 

“ Why, he ain’t nothin’ but a boy,” said 
Uncle Jedd to himself, regarding the new min¬ 
ister critically for a moment from the vestibule. 
“ He won’t do.” And the ancient sexton gave a 
final tug at the bell-rope which he had retained 
in his hand. While the reverberation of the 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


171 


silvery crash that followed was floating above 
the house-tops and stealing away to die among 
the outlying hills, Uncle Jedd softly closed the 
green-baize doors which opened upon the three 
aisles. 

A contagious ripple and flutter had passed 
over the congregation when Mr. Dillingham as¬ 
cended the pulpit steps and seated himself in 
the antique high-backed chair at the left of the 
desk. This same flutter and ripple was dupli¬ 
cated as he rose to open the service, which he 
did by repeating the Lord’s Prayer in a clear, 
melodious voice, making it seem a new thing 
to some who had only heard it droned before. 
Quick, subtile glances, indicative of surprise 
and approval, were shot from pew to pew. The 
old familiar hymn, too, as he read it, gathered 
fresh beauty from his lips. A chapter from 
the Scriptures followed, in which Mr. Dilling¬ 
ham touched the key-note of his sermon. There 
was a strange light come into the gentle blue 
eyes now, and the serene, pale face that had 
seemed to promise so little was alive with in¬ 
telligence. 

By the time he had reached this portion of 


172 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


the service, the young minister had taken more 
than half of his listeners captive. The sermon 
itself completed the victory, — Mr. Seth Wig¬ 
gins and Uncle Jedd alone remaining uncon¬ 
quered, the former having dropped into oblivi¬ 
ous slumber after the first hymn, and the latter 
having retreated into the belfry, where he had 
sat ruminative on a rafter, communing with 
the glossy pigeons and ringdoves, until it was 
time for him to open the doors below. 

Mr. Wiggins awoke instinctively, with a jerk, 
for the benediction, and assumed that half- 
deprecatory, half-defiant expression which marks 
the chronic delinquent; and Uncle Jedd threw 
open the padded doors just at the critical in¬ 
stant, as if he had been waiting there a cen¬ 
tury. 

As the people filed out of church, both these 
gentlemen were made aware that the new min¬ 
ister had created a deep impression on the con¬ 
gregation. A drizzling warm rain had begun 
to fall, as I have said, and groups of elderly 
ladies and pretty girls, grasping their skirts 
with despairing clutches, stood about the vesti¬ 
bule waiting for umbrellas to be brought. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


173 


“ A young man of uncommon talent,” Mr. 
Lathers, the master of the Boys’ High-School, 
was heard to remark to Mr. Gargoyle, the re¬ 
tired plumber. 

“ 0, uncommon! ” responded that gentleman. 

“ I think he is just perfectly splendid,” said 
Miss Imogen Browne, bringing her creaseless 
lavender gloves together ecstatically. 

“ So modest,” said Miss Hesba Godfrey. 

“ And such fine eyes,” chimed Miss Amelia, 
the younger sister. 

“ How lovely it was in him,” remarked Miss 
Blydenburgli, composedly fastening her brace¬ 
let, which had come unlinked, and giving it a 
little admonitory pat, 44 to choose for his text 
the very verse which Parson Hawkins was 
reading when he died, — 4 Thou good and faith¬ 
ful servant,’ etc., etc.” 

44 And how beautifully he spoke of Parson 
Hawkins,” said young Mrs. Newbury, looking 
distractingly cool and edible — something like 
celery — in her widows’-weeds. 44 1 was ready 
to cry.” 

44 1 did.” 

44 What a spiritual face he has ! ” observed 


174 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


the elder Miss Trippew, who painted in water- 
colors ; 44 it reminded me of our Saviour’s in 
the engraving of Leonardo da Yinci’s 4 Last 
Supper.’ ” 

44 And what a delicious voice, — like Wendell 
Phillips’s.” 

44 Then such a sermon ! It is certainly an 
improvement on the poor old parson’s inter¬ 
minable ninthlies and finallies.” 

44 1 wonder if he is married,” said Miss Can¬ 
dace Woodman, a compact little person, with 
almond-shaped brown eyes and glittering yel¬ 
low ringlets which might have been sent to 
the mint and cut up instantly into five-dollar 
gold-pieces. 

Miss Candace’s remark cast a strange gloom 
for a moment over the group in which she 
stood. Presently the umbrellas appeared ; 
snowy skirts were daintily gathered up; the 
vestibule was deserted ; the voices melted away 
into the distance. Here and there along the 
streets, darting to and fro in the rain like 
swallows, one might have caught scores of 
such light-winged adjectives as enthusiastic 
young women let loose when they give expres¬ 
sion to their admiration. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


175 


“ Well, well,” muttered Uncle Jedd, turning 
the key in the ponderous lock of the church- 
door, “ I dunno what th’ world is a-comin’ 
ter! ” 


“ And what do you think of Mr. Dilling¬ 
ham, Prue ? ” asked Mr. Dent, as the hoofs of 
the horses struck on the slippery planks of the 
bridge leading from town. 

Mr. Dent had not even blinked that day in 
church. It had been noticed and commented 
on by the local satirist, that that suspicious 
smooth place on the wooden pillar intersecting 
the northwest corner of Mr. Dent’s pew was 
not covered once during the sermon. Mr. 
Dent himself had observed that “damned spot” 
for the first time with remorse, and had se¬ 
cretly determined to have the interior of the 
church repainted at his own expense. 

“ I think,” said Prudence, in reply to her 
guardian’s question, — “I think he reads well 
and speaks well.” 

“ Gad, I never heard anybody speak better, 
except one, and that was Daniel Webster.” 

u He is very handsome, and seems to be un¬ 
conscious that he is conscious of it.” 


176 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


“ I declare, Prue, you are too deep for me!” 

“ Is n’t he, and with good reason, just a little 
bit — you - know — meekly conceited ? ” 

“ Not at all,” said Mr. Dent. “ I don’t know 
a man with less conceit than Dillingham. He 
is in earnest. He is going to be very much 
interested in his work here, and will make his 
mark. I am only afraid we shall not be able 
to keep so brilliant a fellow.” 

u Why not ? ” 

“ When he becomes known, some wealthy 
Boston or New York society will be sure to 
make him tempting offers.” 

“ But if he is very much interested in his 
work here, he will not be tempted.” 

“ Perhaps not. But the best of them like fat 
salaries,” said Mr. Dent, absently. 

Prudence pictured to herself Parson Wibird 
deserting the North Parish, or any parish where 
he thought his duty lay, to accept a call from 
some richer congregation; but she was not able 
to draw a distinct picture of it. 

“ Then I suppose the fatter the salary is the 
deeper the interest they take in their work ? ” 
Prudence remarked. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


177 


“ Yes,” said Mr. Dent, shortly. 

He felt that he had cast a reflection upon his 
friend Dillingham; he did not see exactly how, 
and it annoyed him. The rest of the ride home 
was in silence. Prudence, too, was not satis¬ 
fied with herself. In intimating that she 
thought Mr. Dillingham conceited, she had de¬ 
parted from her usual candor. 

Throughout the services his manner had been 
without a tinge of self-consciousness. She had 
taken her seat in the pew rather sadly. To 
see a new minister standing in the place hal¬ 
lowed so many years by the presence of Parson 
Wibird — it was only a fortnight ago that he 
stood there, with his placid, venerable face — 
could but be painful to her. The first few 
words Mr. Dillingham uttered had grated on 
her heart; then she had yielded insensibly to 
the charm which had fallen upon most of the 
congregation, and found herself listening to him 
with hushed breath. The strains of the organ 
seemed to take up the prayer where he had 
paused; the tones of his voiceband the rich 
swell of the music blended and appeared to 
have one meaning, like those frescos in which 


178 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


the same design repeats itself in different tints. 
Slie listened and listened, and when Uncle 
Jedd suddenly threw open the muffled green 
doors, it was as if a spell had been broken. 
0, glorious gift of speaking golden words with 
a golden tongue ! 

A sense of having been disloyal to the mem¬ 
ory of the old parson was troubling Prudence 
when Mr. Dent put his question, and she had 
not answered him fairly. It was sins like that 
which Prudence would have had to confess if 
she had been a Roman Catholic. 

She liked Mr. Dillingham more than she had 
believed it possible to like Parson Wibird’s 
successor; but the limitations of her character 
would not allow her to acknowledge it upon 
compulsion. On leaving the church she felt in 
her heart that she disliked Mr. Dillingham for 
having made her listen to him; and there 
shaped itself in Prudence’s mind an inexplica¬ 
ble wish, — often enough she thought of it 
afterwards, — that he had never come to Riv- 
ermouth. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


179 


XT. 

A New England Idol. 

O N the following Sunday the Rev. James 
Dillingham was formally installed pastor 
of the Old Brick Church. The Rev. Josephus 
Starleigh delivered the installation sermon (af¬ 
terwards printed in pamphlet form at the re¬ 
quest of the parish), and Mr. Thomas Jeffer¬ 
son Greene, a young poet of local celebrity, 
composed an original hymn for the occasion. 

So the mantle of Parson Wibird Hawkins 
fell upon the shoulders of the young minister, 
and the solemn chant ascended, while the 
great guns were booming down South. 

Those were the days — what ages ago they 
seem ! — when the tap of the snare-drum and 
the shrill treble of the fife startled New Eng¬ 
land from her dream, and awoke the vengeful 
echoes which had been slumbering in the 
mountain fastnesses and among the happy val¬ 
leys for nearly half a century. 


180 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


It had long ceased to be at Mr. Dillingham’s 
option to return to South Carolina, and he 
must have congratulated himself on having 
found so pleasant a haven as Rivermouth to 
rest in until the simoon blew over. And cer¬ 
tainly Rivermouth congratulated itself on shel¬ 
tering so brilliant a young divine. I happened 
to be there at that period, recovering from a 
protracted illness, and I had the privilege of 
witnessing a spectacle which is possible only 
in genteel decayed old towns like that in which 
the scene of my story lies. To see one or two 
hundred young New England vestals burning 
incense and strewing flowers before a slim 
young gentleman in black is a spectacle worth 
witnessing once in the course of one’s life. 

The young man who, putting behind him 
the less spiritual rewards of other professions, 
selects the ministry as the field of his labors 
— drawn to his work by the consciousness 
that it is there his duty points — is certain to 
impress us with the purity of his purpose. 
That lie should exert a stronger influence over 
our minds than a young lawyer does, or a 
young merchant, or a young man in any re- 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


181 


spectacle walk of life, is easily understood. 
But a young man, because he buttons the top 
button of his coat and wears a white necktie, 
is not necessarily a person of exalted purpose 
or shining ability. Yet he is apt, without any 
very searching examination, to be so regarded 
in some of our provincial towns. I think the 
straight-cut black coat must possess a subtile 
magnetism in itself, something analogous to 
the glamour there is in the uniform of a 
young naval or army officer. How else shall 
we explain the admiration which we have many 
a time seen lavished on very inferior young 
men ? 

I am not speaking in this vein of the Rev. 
James Dillingham. The secret of his popular¬ 
ity was an open secret. It was his manly 
bearing and handsome face and undeniable elo¬ 
quence that made him a favorite at once in 
Rivermouth, and would have commended him 
anywhere. If Mr. Dillingham turned the heads 
of all the young women in the parish, he won 
the hearts of nearly all the elderly people also. 
I think he would have done this by his amia¬ 
bility and talents, if he had not been rich or 


182 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


young or handsome. If he had been married ? 
Well, I cannot say about that. A young un- 
Inarried clergyman, especially if he is rich, is 
likely to be well thought of in a sequestered 
valley where there are a surplus of blooming 
Rachels and a paucity of available Jacobs. 

From my point of view, it was something of 
an ordeal that Mr. Dillingham passed through 
in those first three months. As much as I 
admired his sermons, and they were above the 
average both in style and texture, I admired 
greatly more the modest good sense which en¬ 
abled him *to keep his bark trim in those pleas¬ 
ant but perilous waters. A vain man would 
have been wrecked in a week. But the Rev. 
Mr. Dillingham, as Mr. Ralph Dent had de¬ 
clared, was without conceit of the small kind. 
The attentions Mr. Dillingham received from 
all quarters would have gone far to spoil eight 
men in ten placed in his position. It is so 
easy to add another story to the high opinion 
which other people have of you. 

There were evening parties made for Mr. 
Dillingham at the Blydenburghs’, the Gold- 
stones’, and the Grimes’s ; there were picnics 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


183 


up the river, and excursions down the harbor, 
and innumerable teaings on shore. I do not 
know if Mr. Dillingham had a very strong 
sense of humor; but even if he were only 
mildly humorous, he must have been amused 
as well as embarrassed by the number of em¬ 
broidered slippers and ingenious pen-wipers and 
study-caps and carved paper-cutters that fell to 
his lot at the fair held about this time for the 
benefit of the foreign missions. If he had 
been a centipede he could not have worn out 
the slippers under four years, wearing them 
day and night; if lie had been a hydra he 
could not have made head against the study- 
caps in a lifetime. Briareus would have lacked 
hands to hold the paper-cutters. The slippers 
overran Mr. Dillingham’s bedroom like the 
swarms of locusts that settled upon Egypt. 
The pen-wipers made his study-table look like 
a bed of variegated dahlias. 

There were other expressions of regard, less 
material and tangible than these, to be sure, 
but which must have been infinitely harder to 
dispose of. There were sudden droopings of 
eyelashes, black or golden, when he spoke; 


184 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


furtive glances of shyness or reverence; half- 
parted lips, indicating that breathless interest 
which is the very cream of compliment, and 
flies to the head like wine. 

Mr. Dillingham moved gracefully and se¬ 
renely among the shoals and quicksands; he 
listened to the songs of the sirens, and passed 
on. He did not, however, accept the flattery 
as if it w*ere only his due ; he accepted it mod¬ 
estly, and was simply natural, and candid, and 
good-natured, like a man who finds himself 
among friends. “ I see how it is,” he once 
remarked to Mr. Dent, “ I am standing in the 
sunshine created by my predecessor.” It was 
no glory of his own ; he was fortunate in fall¬ 
ing among a people who took kindly to their 
minister. 

If Mr. Dillingham had been blind, he might 
have seen that he could have his choice of 
Rivermoutli’s belles; and he was far from sight¬ 
less. He read women and men very well in 
his quiet fashion. Clearly, he was in no haste 
to be fettered. What a crowd of keen, fair 
slave-merchants would have flocked down to 
the market-place, if this slender, blond prince 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


185 


from Southland had been chained by the ankle 
to one of the stalls, to be knocked down by 
Mr. Wiggins to the highest bidder! 

Miss Veronica Blydenburgh, who passed her 
winters in New York and Baltimore, and 
had flirted in a high-spirited way with various 
professions, became suddenly pensive. Hesba 
Godfrey candidly owned that she had fallen in 
love with Mr. Dillingham before he got half¬ 
way up the pulpit stairs the first Sunday, but 
that Fred Shelborne refused to release her, and 
she supposed she should be obliged to marry 
Fred, — just to keep him quiet. Young Mrs. 
Newbury in her widows’-weeds, like a diamond 
set in jet, seemed to grow lovelier day by day. 
In my own mind I put the widow down as 
dangerous. Not that I had any reason for so 
doing. Mr. Dillingham smiled upon her with 
precisely the same smile he gave to the Widow 
Mugridge. There was not a shade of differ¬ 
ence perceptible between his manner to the 
elder Miss Trippew, a remarkably plain lamb, 
and his manner to Miss Veronica of the golden 
fleece. I said it before, and I say again, I 
admired the way he carried himself through 
all this. 


186 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


When Mr. Dillingham, the morning follow¬ 
ing his initial sermon, signified to the deacons 
his acceptance of the pastorate of the Old 
Brick Church, a knotty question arose as to 
the residence of the new minister. There was 
no parsonage attached to the church ; the cot¬ 
tage which Parson Hawkins had occupied so 
many years did not belong to the society; be¬ 
sides, if there had been a parsonage, Mr. Dil¬ 
lingham had no family, and the absurdity of 
his going to housekeeping without a family 
was obvious. The three or four private board¬ 
ing-places suggested to him failed to meet his 
views. Deacon Twombly, who saw the advan¬ 
tage of having a lucrative boarder, hinted at 
his first-floor as furnishing desirable accommo¬ 
dation ; but the ewe-lamb was brought up as 
an objection. 

Mr. Dillingham, who was staying at the Bell 
Tavern, the only hotel in town, — having de¬ 
clined Mr. Dent’s offer of hospitality, — cut 
the Gordian knot by deciding to remain where 
he was. 

This gave a sensible shock to some of the 
congregation, for it seemed scarcely proper for 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


187 


the pastor of the Old Brick Church to live at 
a hotel. Deacon Wendell adroitly intimated as 
much to Mr. Dillingham, who replied that he 
did not see why it was proper for him to re¬ 
main six days at the hotel, as he had done, if 
it was improper for him to remain there six 
months, or six years. Propriety was not a 
question of time. The house was quiet, his 
rooms commodious and comfortable, and he did 
not see how he could do better. He invited 
Deacon Wendell to dinner, and no further ob¬ 
jections were heard of. 

In the first bloom of his popularity Mr. Dil¬ 
lingham could have done pretty much as he 
pleased, and he did. 

Among other innovations, he brought sun¬ 
shine into the Old Brick Church. Parson 
Hawkins had been a good man, a saint, in¬ 
deed ; but his saintliness had been of the som¬ 
bre sort; listening to some of his doctrinal ser¬ 
mons, one might have applied to him that epi¬ 
gram of Landor’s,— 

“ Fear God ! ” says Percival ; and when you hear 
Tones so lugubrious, you perforce must fear: 

If in such awful accents he should say, 

“ Fear lovely Innocence! ” you’d run away ! 


188 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


That early Puritan taint which sometimes 
appeared in Parson Hawkins’s theology, but 
never in his daily life, was an alien thing to 
Mr. Dillingham in or out of the pulpit. The 
spirit of his teaching was eminently a cheerful 
spirit. 

There was a new order of things in the North 
Parish. The late parson had stood a great deal 
of browbeating first and last. A conservative 
man, leaning perhaps a little too heavily on 
the pillars of the church, he had ever consulted 
the inclination of the deacons. They had an 
independent minister now; a parson who set¬ 
tled questions for himself, and did not embar¬ 
rass his mind by loading it with outside opin¬ 
ions. There was a spice of novelty in this 
surprisingly agreeable to the palate of a com¬ 
munity long accustomed to domineer over its 
pastor. How long will it last ? I used to 
wonder. I had seen so many idols set up rev¬ 
erently, and bowled over ruthlessly, that I was 
slightly sceptical as to the duration of Mr. Dil¬ 
lingham’s popularity. If the towns-people were 
image-worshippers, they were iconoclasts also, 
when the mood was on them. But Mr. Dil- 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


189 


lingham’s popularity did not wane during my 
three months’ stay in Rivermoutli; it went on 
steadily increasing. The war-fever was at its 
height in those months; and the loyalty of Mr. 
Dillingham, a Southerner, stood out in striking 
contrast with the mild patriotism of several of 
our native-born statesmen. When his first 
quarter’s salary fell due, Mr. Dillingham set 
the seal to public favor by turning over the 
amount to the fund for the Soldiers’ Hospital. 
Uncle Jedd himself, one of the last in the par¬ 
ish that held out against the new minister, was 
obliged to admit that this was very handsome 
in the young man. 

Mr. Dillingham had not been three weeks in 
Rivermoutli before he knew all the queer old 
men and women in the place, and stood in 
their good graces. Even the one habitual 
drunkard, when he was not hiding the light of 
his countenance at the Town-Farm, would touch 
his battered hat convulsively, meeting the young 
parson on the street. 

Mr. Dillingham was gifted in a high degree 
with the genius for knowing people, and dis¬ 
played consummate tact in his dealings with 


190 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


the poor of the parish. When he made the 
Widow Pepperell and the Clemmer boys his 
pensioners, he did it so delicately that the ob¬ 
ligation seemed on his side. “ The parson’s 
smile,” said Sandy Marden, “ jest doubles what 
he gives a feller.” Jeremiah Bowditch, the 
unfortunate inebriate mentioned, — a shy, mor¬ 
bid man, and as sensitive as an exposed 
nerve, — was not afraid to apply to the parson 
for a dollar, having discovered that the coin 
would not be dropped upon him from such a 
moral height as to knock the breath out of his 
body and wound all his finer feelings. 

“ What I like in Dillingham,” said the Hon. 
Sam Knubley, democratic member of the Gen¬ 
eral Court, “ is that there is n’t any 4 first- 
family ’ nonsense about him. You can see 
with half an eye that he belongs to the South¬ 
ern aristocracy, but he is n’t eternally shinning 
up his genealogical tree. There’s old Blyden- 
burgh, who is always perching himself on the 
upper branches and hurling down the cocoa- 
nuts of his ancestors at common folks.” 

It is not to be supposed that the Hon. Sam 
Knubley himself would have objected to a few 


PRUOENCE PALFREY. 


191 


brilliant ancestors. To have the right to fall 
in at the end of a long queue of men and 
women distinguished in their day and genera¬ 
tion, is a privilege which none but a simpleton 
would undervalue. It is a privilege, however, 
which often has its drawbacks. Much is ex¬ 
pected of a man whose progenitors have been 
central figures. To inherit the great name 
without the great gifts is a piece of ironical 
good fortune. When one’s ancestors have been 
everything, and one’s self is nothing, it is per¬ 
haps just as well not to demand from the 
world the same degree of consideration that 
was given voluntarily to one’s predecessors. I 
have encountered two or three young gentle¬ 
men in the capital of the Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts who seemed to have the idea 
that they were killed at the battle of Bunker 
Hill. It was possibly this sort of assumption 
that displeased the Hon. Sam Knubley ; if so, 
the Hon. Sam Knubley was quite right in the 
matter. 

Mr. Dent witnessed with pride the success 
of his young friend ; and Prudence, who, by 
the way, had naturally seen a great deal of 


192 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


Mr. Dillingham meanwhile, began to take her¬ 
self to task for her cold demeanor towards 
him. 

If the truth must be told, she had been far 
from cordial to Mr. Dillingham. Now, it is as 
mortifying to have one’s lack of cordiality un¬ 
noticed as it is to have one’s warmth over¬ 
looked. Mr. Dillingham had apparently not 
observed that Miss Palfrey had treated him 
with haughtiness. If she had been the Widow 
Mugridge, he could not have smiled upon her 
more benignly, or listened to her more atten¬ 
tively, when she was pleased to address him. 
The offence to her self-love was so subtile that 
Prudence was never able to account for the 
restless and half-provoked mood which, up to 
this time, had always possessed her in his 
presence. 

44 The fact is,” Prudence soliloquized one 
evening when the young clergyman had taken 
tea at Willowbrook, 44 1 have an unamiable dis¬ 
position ; Uncle Ralph has spoiled me by hu¬ 
moring me. I must discipline myself, and I’ll 
begin by treating Mr. Dillingham with a little 
politeness, if his royal highness will allow it. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


193 


I always feel as if he stepped down from a 
throne to converse with me. In spite of his 
smile and deference, when one is speaking, 
there’s something depressing and condescend¬ 
ing in his air. If King Coplietua was the 
least like that, I wonder the beggar-maid had 
anything to do with him.” 

It was, by the way, Miss Veronica Blyden- 
burgh who had christened him King Cophetua. 


194 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


XII. 


Prue ! 


HOUGH the Rev. Mr. Dillingham had too 



JL much diplomacy to stroke one lamb on 
the head more tenderly than another, and so 
throw the whole flock into confusion, he made 
no secret of his preference for Mr. Dent. 

Mr. Dillingham passed most of his leisure 
hours at Willowbrook. Since his installation, 
he had taken tea there every Sunday evening. 
When Mr. Dent went to town, which was three 
or four times a week, he always dropped into 
his friend’s study, and frequently Mr. Dilling¬ 
ham rode home witli him and remained to 
dinner. There was a well-stocked fish-pond a 
few miles beyond Willowbrook; both gentle¬ 
men were expert anglers, and they spent their 
mornings together in the season. Then there 
were horseback rides, in which Prudence occa¬ 
sionally joined. Mr. Dillingham had purchased 
a fine animal, which he rode admirably. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


195 


“We all ride in the South,” he said to Miss 
Palfrey. “ The people in the town stare at 
me as if I were a part of a circus caravan, 
but I trust they will get accustomed to the 
sight. A saddle-horse is a necessity to me; I 
have had one since I was six years old. To 
drive around in a gig with side-lanterns, like 
great goggles, as that good soul Dr. Tredick 
does, would kill me. I should never get out 
alive so far as Willowbrook, Miss Palfrey. I’d 
much prefer being brought here in Mr. Plun- 
ket’s hand-cart.” 

Plunket was a harmless, half-witted old fellow 
about town who picked up a living by carry¬ 
ing packages in a small hand-cart as aged and 
shattered as himself. He had not escaped Mr. 
Dillingham, whose eye for every sort of eccen¬ 
tric character was, as I have said, exception¬ 
ally keen. 

The friendship between Mr. Dillingham and 
Mr. Dent deepened as the weeks passed, and 
the latter gentleman experienced something like 
a sinking at heart whenever his thought re¬ 
curred to the possibility that his young friend 
might be tempted some time or other to desert 


196 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


Rivermouth for a more extended field of oper¬ 
ation. 

“ I wish to heaven, Dillingham,” exclaimed 
Mr. Dent one evening at the tea-table, “ that 
you would give up your apartments in town, 
and come out here with us. There ’s a cosey 
room leading from the south chamber that 
would make a capital study for you.” 

“ I am afraid I should find it too pleasant,” 
returned Mr. Dillingham, “ and fall into a 
habit of not working. Besides, my parish 
calls ? I am very sensible of your kindness, 
my friend; but, really, I think I am better off 
in my present quarters. You see, two ser¬ 
mons a week keep me pretty busy. Then I 
am not a lark as regards early rising. I should 
be a dreadful infliction in a private house. All 
Miss Palfrey’s methodical domestic laws would 
be overthrown at once.” 

“ I’d like to be an eyewitness to that,” Mr. 
Dent said, laughing; “ her law is as the law 
of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not. 
Prue is a regular martinet in the commissary 
department.” 

“I really am,” spoke Prudence for herself. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


197 


a ^ one n °I down in time, one gets a cold 
breakfast.” 

“ There, you see,” said Mr. Dillingham. 
“Now there are two things I never can do; 
I cannot endure a cold breakfast, and I never 
can get down early to a warm one.” 

In spite of this obstacle, however, Mr. Dil¬ 
lingham often occupied that spare room with 
the southern exposure, which Mr. Dent had 
mentioned, sometimes spending several days in 
succession with his Willowbrook friends. Then 
they met him continually in society in town, 
and in point of fact saw as much of him as if 
he had accepted Mr. Dent’s proposition. 

This intimacy could not fail to give rise to 
remarks. It was soon whispered, and not too 
softly, that the young minister was paying 
attentions to Mr. Dent’s ward. Now, though 
Prudence’s coldness had moderated somewhat, 
and she no longer had to make exertions to 
be polite to Mr. Dillingham, Mr. Dillingham 
had not in the least changed his manner to 
her. She was aware, and the reflection some¬ 
times piqued her, that she was no better ac¬ 
quainted with him after months of intercourse 


198 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


than she was on the day she first saw him. 
Perhaps it was her own fault they were not 
warmer friends in the beginning; but it was 
not her fault now. She had learned to respect 
his character, to admire his intellect, and to 
derive a quiet pleasure from his presence; but 
she had evidently not taught him to like her 
more than he had liked her at the start. This 
was not flattering under the circumstances. 
The inference was, Mr. Dillingham disliked her, 
and tolerated her only on account of his friend¬ 
ship for Mr. Dent. 

Prudence secretly resented this, and formed 
a misty idea that it would be an agreeable 
thing to have him fall slightly in love with 
her, not seriously in love, but just enough to 
enable her to teach him a lesson. This idea, 
in no respect a commendable one, took a more 
definite shape, and became almost a wish sub¬ 
sequently. Nice young women are not to be 
treated cavalierly with impunity. 

It was rumored at first that Mr. Dillingham 
was very much interested in Miss Palfrey: 
that was sufficiently annoying; but later on, 
rumor changed its tactics, and reported that 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


199 


Miss Palfrey was very much interested in Mr. 
Dillingham. Gossip, like Providence, is inscru¬ 
table in its ways; it has its laws, we may 
suppose, clearly defined, if one could get at 
them ; but they are not to be reached by in¬ 
ductive reasoning, and it must remain a mys¬ 
tery how it came to be believed in Rivermoutli 
that Prudence was very unhappy in conse¬ 
quence of her unreturned love for Mr. Dilling¬ 
ham. 

To say that she did not hear of this exas¬ 
perating story as soon as it was born, would 
be to say that Prudence had no intimate fe¬ 
male friend, and there was Miss Veronica Bly- 
denburgh. 

“ And there is n’t the least shadow of truth 
in it, Prue ? ” said Veronica. 

u Not the faintest. How absurd! I don’t 
care that for him,” said Prudence, measuring 
off an infinitesimal portion of her little finger’s 
tip, “ nor he for me. He and Uncle Ralph 
talk fish-hooks and theology and war, and I 
don’t believe Mr. Dillingham has noticed 
whether I am sixteen or sixty.” 

“ Dear me,” said Veronica, thoughtfully. 


200 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


“ Mortifying, is n’t it ? ” 

“ To be sure it is.” 

“ I like him, of course,” continued Prudence; 
u he is extremely agreeable, and all that. If 
there was, or could be, anything more, I should 
be the first to tell you.” 

u Dear me,” repeated Veronica. “ And it 
came so straight — from the Goldstones, you 
know.” And Veronica, who had put her inter¬ 
rogation rather solemnly, became unnecessarily 
merry over the absurdity of the thing. 

“ The Goldstones ? ” said Prue. “ I am very 
grateful to them ! ” 

After they had parted, Prudence thought of 
the abrupt change of mood in her friend, and 
it brought her to a full stop in the middle of 
the bridge, for Prudence was walking in from 
Ri vermouth. Then she recalled a trivial inci¬ 
dent that had taken place a few nights before 
in town, at a party at the Blydenburglis’. It 
had made no impression on her at the time, 
but now she recalled it. Veronica had missed 
her bracelet late in the evening, a valuable 
bracelet, a large opal with diamonds. She had 
been in the garden; she had danced in the 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


201 


parlors; and had gone twice to the supper- 
room. The bracelet was not to be found in 
the house, and Veronica with several of the 
guests, among others Prudence and Mr. Dil¬ 
lingham, went into the garden to search for it 
in a certain arbor where ices had been served. 
There were a score or two of Chinese lanterns 
hung about the trellis-work, and the place was 
as light as day. In bending over the sward 
Mr. Dillingham had inadvertently brushed 
against Veronica’s shoulder, — that snowy 
shoulder which had such an innocent arch way 
of shrinking from the corsage, — and Veronica 
had started back with a pretty cry, blushing 
absurdly. Mr. Dillingham had been discon¬ 
certed for an instant, then he had bowed in a 
formal way to Veronica. 

This little scene came up before Prudence’s 
eyes again, and she walked on in a re very. 

“ It would be a very good match, though,” 
said Prudence, thinking aloud. 

The piece of gossip which Miss Blydenburgh 
had unfolded to her friend vexed that young 
lady exceedingly. The other rumor, placing 
Mr. Dillingham at her feet, had vexed her too; 


202 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


but that could have been borne. It sank into 
insignificance beside this new version, in which 
she was made to play the heroine with dis¬ 
hevelled hair and unrequited affections, — a role 
to which she was not kindly disposed; for 
Prudence was as proud as Mrs. Lucifer, if I 
may make the comparison without assuming 
the responsibility of creating the personage. 

Prudence’s prompt impulse was to fall back 
on her former frosty manner towards Mr. Dil¬ 
lingham ; but that was hardly practicable now; 
besides, the Rivermouth censors would be sure 
to misconstrue her indifference and attribute it 
to wounded vanity. 

Her wisest course was to treat Mr. Dilling¬ 
ham naturally, and let the shameless scandal 
die of its own inanity. He would never hear 
the silly report; there was no one who would 
venture to touch on so delicate a matter with 
him. Even the Widow Mugridge, who was 
capable of almost anything in that line, might 
be pictured as shrinking before such an attempt; 
for though Mr. Dillingham was as generally 
affable and approachable as the sunshine, his 
familiarity did not breed contempt. In the sea 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


203 


of adulation that dimpled around him, there 
was a gentle under-tow of wholesome respect. 
The young clergyman’s independence and sharp¬ 
ness, when called for, were quite well under¬ 
stood in the parish. He had wit, but no humor; 
and the difference between wit and humor, it 
seems to me, is just the difference between an 
open and a shut penknife. So there was no 
chance of anybody coming to him with tittle- 
tattle, especially about Miss Palfrey. 

Having settled this in her mind, Prudence 
calmed; but the gossip still rankled in her 
bosom, and she felt it would be a most satisfy¬ 
ing vindication and triumph if Mr. Dillingham 
would only fall in love with her mildly, and 
afford her the opportunity of proving that she 
did not care for him, in that way. 

In other ways she cared for him greatly. In¬ 
deed, she had a strong desire for his friendship. 
Every one had always liked her; she had never 
been courteously snubbed before, or snubbed at 
all, and had no taste for it. The hurt went 
deeper than her vanity. It was a shocking nov¬ 
elty to encounter a person — a person whom she 
esteemed, too — whose whole demeanor said to 


204 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


her as plainly as words, but politely, of course: 
“ Miss Palfrey, when you laugh, and say sharp 
things to me, I smile upon you; when you are 
demure and repentant and inclined to be 
friendly, I smile upon you all the same; for, 
really, I do not care whether you are amiable 
or unamiable. It is a matter that concerns 
you, and you alone.” 

If Mr. Dillingham had studied Prudence from 
her infancy, and had wished to win her regard, 
he could not have proceeded more judiciously. 
It is true, John Dent did not win her by this 
method; but she was younger then, and maybe 
off her guard. Perhaps if John Dent had had 
it to do over again, he might not have found 
it so easy. What is efficacious at seventeen or 
eighteen is by no means certain of success at 
twenty-one. 

Prudence did not think often of John Dent 
at this epoch. The phantom that had haunted 
her so long had somehow withdrawn itself. 
For four of five months now she had breathed 
with a conscious sense of freedom from the 
past. Mr. Dent’s letters to Montana and Cali¬ 
fornia had brought no response, and the sub- 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


205 


ject of the will was one that could well lie in 
abeyance. Nothing could be done about it, and 
it was not agreeable to talk or think about. 

Mr. Dent observed with pleasure Prudence’s 
growing appreciation of Mr. Dillingham, and 
had some views which he cautiously kept to 
himself. Nothing would hq^te delighted him 
more than to see Prue well married now, how¬ 
ever much the idea of losing her had distracted 
him two or three years before; but he was 
not going to interfere. He had once come 
near making her very unhappy, and had learned 
to distrust his own sagacity in matters of the 
heart. He purposed in the present case to let 
things take their own course. 

Things were taking their course, perhaps a 
little lazily, but on the whole to his satisfac¬ 
tion. Prudence was never so lovely or sweet- 
tempered, and Mr. Dent wondered time and 
again that Dillingham did not see more clearly 
than lie seemed to see that Prudence was a 
very charming young person. Mr. Dillingham 
held the stirrup for her to mount Jenny, he 
folded her shawl neatly under the carriage-seat, 
and was remiss in none of those attentions 


206 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


which a well-bred man pays to a lady, young 
or old ; but in everything he did or said there 
was an air of having been introduced to Miss 
Palfrey yesterday. To be sure, he had once 
or twice addressed her as “ Miss Prudence,” 
instead of Miss Palfrey, striking her speechless 
with astonishment; but then he had corrected 
himself in the same breath. 

“ Why in the deuce does n’t he call her 
Prue, like everybody else ? ” muttered Mr. Dent. 
“ He has known her five months intimately, 
and Jack called her Prue after fifteen minutes’ 
acquaintance. But that was Jack all over.” 

The autumn of this year was unprecedent¬ 
edly lovely, — it was one prolonged Indian 
summer, — and horseback rides early in the 
morning were the chief diversion at Willow- 
brook, where Mr. Dillingham frequently re¬ 
mained overnight to accompany Mr. Dent and 
his ward. If Mr. Dillingham had a consti¬ 
tutional objection to breakfasting with the 
larks, he had none whatever to rising at five 
o’clock to take a four-mile gallop along the 
Rivermouth lanes, now wonderful with their 
brilliant foliage. Prudence was an excellent 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


207 


horse-woman, and never lagged behind her com¬ 
rades. 

“As she fled fast through sun and shade 
The happy winds upon her played, 

Blowing the ringlet from the braid.” 

Mr. Dillingham must have been a stupid 
fellow if he did not notice how this autumnal 
weather heightened Prue’s beauty. She had 
caught a trick of color from nature, and made 
the rosy maple-leaves by the roadside seem 
tame in tint compared with her rich lips and 
cheeks. 

On one of these excursions Mr. Dent was 
unlucky enough to sprain his ankle, and the 
rides came to an end, at least Mr. Dent’s did. 

Mr. Dillingham, who came often now to read 
and chat with his friend, rode alone several 
mornings, and then, rather to the surprise of 
Prudence, invited her to bear him company. 

“Would it be proper for me to go, uncle?” 
asked Prudence, standing with drooped eyelids 
by Mr. Dent’s lounge. 

“ Would it be proper! ” he echoed. “ Why, 
the female population of Rivermouth would turn 
out in a body, and Dillingham would certainly 


208 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


meet the fate of old Floyd Ireson, who, as you 
remember, was 4 tarred and feathered and car¬ 
ried in a cart by the women of Marblehead’!” 

“ Very well, then,” cried Prue, gayly, “ I ’ll 
ride Kate instead of Jenny. Jenny pokes 
along so, and Mr. Dillingham likes a rapid 
pace.” 

“ 4 Pokes along so ! ’ what a phrase from a 
young lady’s lips ! ” said Mr. Dent, critically. 

“ I said polks,” cried Prue, shamelessly. 

Mr. Dillingham unbent a little that morning. 
Being in some sense a host, he was constrained 
to look after the entertainment of his guest 
and render himself agreeable. The ride was 
without incident, save its uninterrupted pleas¬ 
antness, and Prudence returned with her cheeks 
in bloom and her gray eyes with the daybreak 
in them. 

Three or four days afterwards the young 
minister rode up to the gate just before sun¬ 
down, and asked if Miss Palfrey would repeat 
her gallop. He had discovered a road leading 
to some old earthworks overlooking the harbor, 
where the sunset was a thing to see. Kate 
was saddled, and the two young people went 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


209 


off in a cloud of dust, Mr. Dent leaning on a 
cane at the drawing-room window and smiling 
on them like an amiable Fate. 

Mr. Dent’s sprained ankle was a phenomenal 
case, and I am strongly tempted to prepare an 
elaborate paper on the subject for the pages 
of the “ Boston Medical and Surgical Gazette.” 
At the time of the accident — he turned his 
foot in the stirrup while dismounting — it was 
thought serious enough to merit Dr. Tredick’s 
attention, who relieved Prudence’s solicitude by 
treating the injury lightly. But the weakened 
limb did not recover its strength, even after a 
course of arnica bandages that ought to have 
caused a new leg to grow, or at least to have 
mended the old one though it had been frac¬ 
tured in twenty places. 

The ankle did not get well, and science in 
the person of Dr. Tredick was at a loss to ex¬ 
plain why, and more especially to explain why 
it should be most troublesome in the afternoons. 
Mr. Dent was able in the morning to walk on 
the piazza or go about the house without ex¬ 
cessive inconvenience; but towards three or 
four o’clock, at which hour Mr. Dillingham 


N 


210 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


generally appeared to inquire after the invalid, 
Mr. Dent found it necessary to take to the 
lounge in the parlor, or to sit with his foot 
supported by another chair. 

“ Don’t mind me, Dillingham,” Mr. Dent 
said one day, with touching cheerfulness. “ I 
shall be all right after a while. I miss our 
rides confoundedly, and I know you detest rid¬ 
ing alone. However, there’s Prue ; she’s bet¬ 
ter than nobody.” 

“0, you flatter me!” says Prue. 

“ I fear I have already drawn heavily on 
Miss Prudence’s complaisance,” replied Mr. Dil¬ 
lingham. He did not correct himself this time. 
But Prudence was passionately fond of riding, 
and to ride with Mr. Dillingham was like waltz¬ 
ing with a good partner. She did not require 
other incitive. So it came about, owing to Mr. 
Dent’s slow recovery, that she often accompa¬ 
nied the young minister alone, not caring greatly 
now what people said. She was doing nothing 
wrong, and the innocent enjoyment was an off¬ 
set to any malicious criticism. 

Mr. Dillingham had thawed perceptibly, and 
in a stately style was very gracious to her. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


211 


Prudence’s passing desire to have him love her 
a little had evaporated; she was content with 
his friendship. The severest precision could 
have discovered nothing to cavil at in Pru¬ 
dence’s conduct. As in the old time she had 
not flirted with John Dent, so in the new she 
did not flirt with Mr. Dillingham. She made 
no eyes at him, as Mr. Dent would have stated 
it, and would have stated it regretfully. 

There was not much conversation during 
these horseback excursions, which usually had 
the fort for destination; a swift gallop through 
the bracing autumn air, a halt in the lonely 
redoubt to breathe the horses and see the sun¬ 
set, and a dashing gait homeward, being the 
ends in view. 

It was a charming landscape which unrolled 
itself, like a colored map, at the foot of the 
precipitous hill crowned by the deserted earth¬ 
works. First came a series of cultivated fields, 
orchards, and gardens, nestled among which 
were red-roofed barns and comfortable white 
farm-houses, with striped chimneys, peering 
through the leafless tree-tops. Then came the 
river spanned by a many-arched bridge, linking 


212 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


the picturesque town with the open country. 
Here and there along the wharves the slender 
masts of fishing-smacks shot up sharply. The 
clusters of round islands in the harbor were 
like emeralds set in turquois, for the water at 
this point, at certain seasons, is of a singularly 
opaque blue. Beyond the town lay the bright 
salt marshes softly folded in an azure arm of the 
sea. All this, in the glow of the declining sun, 
was fair to look upon. 

One November afternoon, in the middle of 
the month, Prudence and Mr. Dillingham drew 
rein within the parade-ground of the old forti¬ 
fication just as the sun was sinking. The em¬ 
brasure at which they halted formed the frame 
of a fairy picture in which sea and sky and 
meadow were taking a hundred opaline tints 
from the reflection of the sunset. While the 
horses stood champing the bits, and panting, 
the two riders let the reins slip idly from their 
fingers, and sat watching the scene in silence. 

In a few minutes the vivid colors faded out 
of the sky, save at the horizon, where a strip 
of angry scarlet still lingered, leaving the land¬ 
scape of a soft pearly gray. By and by the 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


213 


strip of scarlet melted into cinnabar, then into 
faint gold, then into silver, then into indistin¬ 
guishable aslies-of-roses like the rest, and the 
early twilight stretched across land and sea. 

“ It is like a dream, is n’t it ? ” murmured 
Prue to herself, for at the instant she had for¬ 
gotten the presence of her companion. 

Mr. Dillingham leaned forward without speak¬ 
ing, and laid his hand lightly on Prudence’s, 
which rested ungloved on the black mane of 
the mare. 

The girl lifted her eyes with a swift move¬ 
ment to the face of the young minister, and 
then very slowly withdrew her hand. 

“ Prue! ” said Mr. Dillingham, softly. 


214 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


XIII. 

Jonah. 

M R. JOSEPH TWOMBLY was sitting on a 
high stool at a desk in the counting- 
room of Messrs. Rawlings & Sons, the Chicago 
bankers. It was after bank hours, and the 
office was deserted. The gray-haired head book¬ 
keeper, and the spruce young clerks who occu¬ 
pied the adjoining desks, had been gone an hour 
or more. The monotonous ticking of the chro¬ 
nometer, pinioned against the wall above the 
massive iron safe, was the only sound that 
broke the quiet of the room, except when 
Twombly made an impatient movement with 
one of his feet on the attenuated rungs of the 
stool, or drummed abstractedly with his fingers 
on the edge of the desk. 

An open letter lay before him, and beside it 
an envelope bearing a Shasta postmark and 
addressed to Joseph Twombly at Rivermouth. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


215 


This letter had just come to him inclosed in 
one of the deacon’s, and was to this effect: — 

Shasta, Cal., October 31, 186- 

My dear Joe : — 

You will probably be surprised to receive a letter 
from me after all these months of silence, — or, rather, 
years, for it is nearly three years, is n’t it, since we 
parted 1 I have been in no mood or condition to 
write before, and I write now only because I may 
not have another chance to relieve you of any un¬ 
certainty you may feel on my account. I have 
thought it my duty to do this since I came to the 
resolve, within a few days, to give up my hopeless 
pursuits here and go into the army. If you do not 
hear from me or of me in the course of four or six 
months, you will know that my bad luck, which be¬ 
gan in Montana, has culminated somewhere in the 
South. Then you can show this to my Uncle Dent, 
or even before, if you wish; I leave it to your dis¬ 
cretion. Perhaps I shall do something in the war; 
who knows 1 It is time for me to do something. I 
am a failure up to date. I’m not sure I am a 
brave man, but I have that disregard for life which 
well fits me to lead forlorn-hopes, — and I’ve led 
many a forlorn-hope these past three years, Joe. 

Ever since the day we said good by at Eed Eock, 


216 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


I have been on the go. I have not stayed more than 
a month in any one spot, except this last half-year 
at a ranch in the neighborhood of Shasta, where I 
went into the stock-raising business with another man 
(who did n’t know I was the spirit of Jonah revisit¬ 
ing the earth), and would have made my fortune, if 
the cattle-disease had not got into the herd just as 
we were on the point of selling out at great profit. 
I was not aware that I had the cattle-disease myself, 
but I fancy I must have given it to the herd. 

What had I been doing all the rest of the time ? 
— for it took me only six months to ruin my friend 
the stock-raiser. I had been searching for George 
Nevins, Joe Twombly ! 

What a story I could tell you, if I had the heart 
and the patience to go over it all again ! How I 
first heard of him in California, where I tracked 
him from place to place, sometimes only an hour or 
so behind him; once I entered a mining-camp just 
as he went out the other side, confound his clever¬ 
ness ! — how I followed him to Texas, and thence to 
Montana again, and from there to Mexico, where I 
lost trace of him; what I suffered mentally and 
physically in those mad hunts would not be believed 
if I could write it out! — how I worked my way 
from town to town, and from camp to camp, only 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


217 


halting here and there to earn a few dollars to help 
me on. Hunger, thirst, cold, and heat, I have known 
them all, Joe, as few men have known them. Shall 
I tell you — and that is the strangest thing! — what 
took the life out of me more than the poverty and 
the treachery and the rest] It was the conviction 
that that man, though I could not put my hand on 
him, had his eye on me all the while, — the cer¬ 
tainty that I never went to sleep without his know¬ 
ing where I lay down, that I never got up but he 
was advised of my next move, that I was under his 
espionage day and night! 

I think my steps were dogged from the time I 
first left Montana, though I had no suspicion of it 
until long after. The suspicion fired ine and gave 
me strength in the beginning, and then it paralyzed 
me, when I saw how easily he eluded my pursuit, 
and how defenceless I was. I could trust nobody. 
The fellow sleeping at my side by the camp-fire 
might be Nevins’s spy. Every stranger that looked 
at me any way curiously sent a chill to my heart. 
Whether there were three men or a hundred em¬ 
ployed to watch me, I cannot tell; but at every 
point there was some one to mislead me or balk my 
plan. The wilds of Montana seemed to be policed 
by this terrible man. "Why did n’t he kill me, and 


10 


218 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


have done with it 1 I don’t know. My life was in 
his hands, and is to-day. The sense of being sur¬ 
rounded and dogged and snared grew insupportable 
at last. Can you understand how maddening it 
was 1 I gave up the hope of meeting Kevins face 
to face, and only longed to hide myself somewhere 
out of his sight. 

About six months ago I fell in with a man at 
Shasta, one Thompson, who owned a ranch twenty 
miles back in the country ; he wanted help in man¬ 
aging his herds, and offered me a share in the stock. 
This business has just turned out disastrously, as I 
have said. Everything I touch turns worthless. It 
was a sorry day for you, poor Joe, when you joined 
fortune with me. I could sink a cork ship. I am 
Jonah without Jonah’s whale. If ever I am thrown 
overboard, I shall be drowned, mark that. 

I had to leave the ranch, and left it two days 
ago. The moment I put foot in Shasta I felt I 
was again under the eye of Nevins’s invisible police. 
I am not sure I shall escape them by going into 
the army. I am not sure, on patriotic grounds, that 
I ought to go into the army. My luck is enough to 
bring on a national defeat. 

In all these thirty-six months, Joe, I had not heard 
a word from Rivermouth,— until last night. I sup- 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


219 


pose you must have written to me; if you have, 
your letters missed fire. No one else, I imagine, 
has been much troubled about my fate. My dear 
old friend, Parson Wibird, is dead, and Miss Pal¬ 
frey is going to marry his successor. So runs the 
world away ! These two items of news gave a hard 
tug at my heart-strings. I got the intelligence in 
the oddest way. Last night, sitting on the porch 
of the hotel, I overheard a stranger talking about 
Eivermouth. You may fancy I pricked up my ears 
at the word, and invented occasion to speak with 
the man. He did not belong to the town, but he 
appeared to have come from there lately, and I 
gathered from him all I wanted to know — and 
more ! 0 Joe ! there are things in the world that 

cut one up more cruelly than hunger and cold. But 
I can’t write of this. I did not mean to write so 
long a letter; I meant only to let you know I was 
alive. Indeed, I am in frightfully good health. If 
I had been rich and happy, I might have been dead 
these two years. “ There ’s nae luck aboot the 
house ! ” 

I’m not breathing a word of reproach against 
anybody, you understand. I have n’t the right. I 
have made my own bed, and if I don’t lie in it 
comfortably, there’s no one to blame except myself 


220 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


I see my mistake. I ought to have stayed at Red 
Rock, and gone to work again, like a man. But 
it's too late now. 

Good by, my dear Joe. I hope you are prosper¬ 
ing, you and your tribe. There must be a lot of you 
by this time! You continue, I suppose, to have an 
annual brother or sister 1 I trust Uncle Dent is well 
also. He is a fine old fellow, and I Ve regretted a 
thousand times that I quarrelled with him. But he 
did brush my hair the wrong way. I start from 
here to-morrow for the East. I have not decided 
yet whether to join the army in the North or in the 
West; but wherever I go, I am, my dear boy, 

Your faithful and unfortunate friend, 

John Dent. 

Mr. Joseph Twombly read these eight pages 
through twice very carefully, interrupting him¬ 
self from time to time to give vent to an ex¬ 
clamation of surprise or pity or disapproval or 
indignation, as the mood moved him. 

“Poor Jack!” said Twombly. “He is a 
kind of Jonah, sure enough, and I don’t be¬ 
lieve the healthiest whale in the world could 
keep him on its stomach for five minutes. 
What a foolish fellow to throw himself away 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


221 


in that fashion! Why in thunder did n’t he 
tell me where to write him? October 31st. 
That’s more than a month ago. The Lord only 
knows what may have happened since then.” 

Twombly sat pondering for some time with 
his elbows on the desk ; then he folded up the 
letter, and placed it in a fresh envelope, which 
he directed in a large, round, innocent hand to 
“ Ralph Dent, Esq., Rivermouth, N. H.” 


222 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


XIV. 


King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid. 

M R. DENT had watched the increasing in¬ 
timacy between Prudence and the young 
minister with much peculiar, secret satisfac¬ 
tion, as the reader has been informed; and 
that afternoon, while she and Mr. Dillingham 
were gazing at the sunset through the embra¬ 
sure of the fort, Mr. Dent, in spite of the pain 
in his ankle, of which he had complained earlier 
in the day, was walking briskly up and down 
the library, building castles for the young 
people. 

When a man has reached the age of Mr. 
Dent, and is too rheumatic himself to occupy 
castles in the air, he indulges in this kind of 
architecture for the benefit of others, that is, 
if he has a generous nature, and Mr. Dent had 
a very generous nature. To see Prue well set¬ 
tled in life, and to have two or three of Prue's 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


223 


children playing around the arm-chair of his 
old age, was his only dream now. So, in con¬ 
structing his castles, he added to each a wing 
for a nursery on a scale more extensive, per¬ 
haps, than would have been approved by either 
of the prospective tenants, if the architect had 
submitted his plans to them. 

Mr. Dent had never asked himself — and pos¬ 
sibly the question would have posed him — why 
he was so willing now for Prudence to marry, 
when the thought of her marrying had appeared 
so terrible to him in connection with his nephew. 
It was John Dent’s misfortune, perhaps, that 
he was the first to stir Mr. Dent’s parental 
jealousy; maybe Mr. Dillingham would have 
fared no better, if he had come first. At all 
events, he had come second, and Mr. Dent was 
far from raising objections. 

He was in the sunniest of humors, this after¬ 
noon, contemplating Prue’s possible happiness 
and his own patriarchal comfort in it, when 
Fanny brought in the evening papers, and with 
them the letter which Mr. Joseph Twombly 
had considerately mailed to Mr. Dent a few 
days before. 


224 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


He tore open the envelope carelessly, recog¬ 
nizing Twombly’s handwriting, but the sight of 
John Dent’s penmanship gave him a turn. He 
ran over the pages hurriedly, and with various 
conflicting emotions, among which a sympathy 
for Jack’s past and present sufferings was not, 
it is to be feared, so pronounced as Twombly’s 
had been. 

It was unquestionably a relief to know that 
Jack was alive and in good health; but it was 
a little unfortunate to have the letter come 
just then, when everything was going on 
so smoothly. The reflection that Jack might 
take it into his head to return to Rivermouth 
and insist on marrying Prue, was not agreeable 
to Mr. Dent. He had assented to this at one 
time; he had overlooked his nephew’s poverty, 
but since then John Dent had not behaved 
handsomely to Prue. 

Whatever Prudence’s feelings were, this let¬ 
ter could but disturb her. It would set her to 
thinking of the past, and that was not desirable. 
But why show her the letter, at present? — he 
would have to show it to her if he spoke of it; 
why not wait until he heard again from Jack, 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


225 


whose plans were still with loose ends? He 
could not be put into possession of the Haw¬ 
kins property or even informed that he was to 
inherit it, for the year specified in the will 
lacked several months of expiration. Moreover, 
the letter was one that for several reasons 
could not well be shown to Prudence; it spoke 
of her marriage as a foregone conclusion, — the 
very way to unsettle everything; and then what 
business had Jack to go and say there were 
things in the world that cut one up more cru¬ 
elly than hunger and cold? What an intem¬ 
perate kind of phraseology that was! 

These reflections were struggling through Mr. 
Dent’s mind when he heard the clatter of hoofs 
at the gate. He crumpled the letter in his 
hand, and thrusting it into his pocket, has¬ 
tened out to the front door. In the middle of 
the hall he recollected what a bad state his 
ankle was in, and limped the rest of the way. 

“ Won’t you stop to tea, Dillingham?” he 
cried, as he saw the young clergyman with one 
foot in the stirrup, Mr. Dillingham having dis¬ 
mounted to assist Prudence from the saddle. 

“ Thanks, my friend; but to-night, you know, 
10 * o 


226 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


is the night I am obliged to prepare my ser¬ 
mon.” 

With which words Mr. Dillingham touched 
his hat to Miss Palfrey, waved his hand smil¬ 
ingly to Mr. Dent, and rode away. 

As Prudence came up the gravelled path, with 
the trail of her riding habit thrown over her 
arm, showing two neat bronze boots, she was 
too much engaged with her own thoughts to 
notice Mr. Dent closely; at another time she 
would have seen that something had disturbed 
him. Mr. Dent was sharper sighted, and he 
saw that Prudence was laboring under unusual 
excitement. Had Dillingham spoken at last, 
and if so, how had Prue taken it ? He did not 
dare to conjecture, for he felt it would be a 
bitter disappointment to him if she had refused 
Dillingham. 

“ At any rate,” Mr. Dent said to himself, 
“Jack’s letter is not the thing for popular 
reading just now.” 

After tea Prudence told her guardian what 
had passed between her and Mr. Dillingham. 
He had asked her to be his wife, but so ab¬ 
ruptly and unexpectedly, that he had startled 


PRUDENCE PALEREY. 


227 


her more than she liked. He had, without any 
warning, leaned forward and taken her hand 
while they were looking at the sunset in the 
bastion of the ruined fort; then he had stepped 
down from his horse, much as King Cophetua 
must have stepped down from the throne, and 
stood at her stirrup-side. 

Prudence felt it would be dreadfully senti¬ 
mental to repeat what Mr. Dillingham had said 
to her, so she did not repeat his words, but 
gave Mr. Dent the substance of them. The 
young man perceived that the suddenness of 
his action had displeased Prudence, and begged 
to be forgiven for that, and for the abruptness 
of his words, if they seemed abrupt to her; 
they did not seem so to him, for he had car¬ 
ried her presence in his thought from the hour 
he first saw her. If during the past months 
he had concealed his feelings in regard to her, 
it was because he knew his own unworthiness, 
and did not dare to hope for so great happi¬ 
ness as her love would be to him. He had 
betrayed his secret involuntarily; the hour, the 
place, and her nearness must plead for him. 

“ He really turned it very neatly,” said Prue, 


228 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


trying to brush off the bloom of romance which 
she was conscious overspread her story, though 
she had endeavored to tell it in as prosaic a 
manner as possible. 

“ He ’s a noble fellow,” exclaimed Mr. Dent 
warmly, “ and is worthy of any woman, — the 
best of women, and that’s you.” 

“ He is noble,” said Prudence, meditatively; 
“ and as he stood there, looking up at me, I 
think I more than half loved him.” 

“ And you told him so ! ” cried Mr. Dent. 

“ No, I did not,” said Prudence, with a per¬ 
plexed expression clouding her countenance. 
“ The words were on my lips, but I could not 
say them. I could not say anything at first; 
he quite took away my breath. When I was 
able to speak I was full of doubt. I do not 
know if I love him. I esteem him and admire 
him ; he lias genius and goodness, and I can 
understand how a woman might be very proud 
of his love ; but when he asked me to marry 
him, it startled me and pained me, instead of 
— of making me very happy, you know.” 

Mr. Dent did not know at all; Prudence’s 
insensibility and hesitation were simply incom- 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


229 


prehensible to him; but lie nodded his head 
appreciatively, as if he took in the whole situ¬ 
ation. 

“ What did you say to him ? ” 

“ Almost what I am saying to you.” 

“ But that was not a very definite answer to 
a proposal of marriage, it strikes me.” 

“ I asked him not to refer to the subject 
again at present.” 

“ That was dodging the question, Prue. 1 ’ 

“ I wanted time, uncle, to know my own 
mind.” 

In effect, Prudence had neither accepted nor 
rejected the young minister. 

“ Rather flattering for a man of Dillingham’s 
character and position,” thought Mr. Dent, “ to 
be kept cooling his heels in an anteroom that 
way.” 

“You see, uncle, it was too important a step 
to be taken without reflection. Thoughtless 
people should not be allowed to marry, ever.” 

“ How long will it take you, Prue, to know 
your mind ? ” 

“ I don’t know,” she said, restlessly; “ a 
week — a month, perhaps.” 


£30 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


“ And in the mean time Dillingham will con¬ 
tinue his visits here just the same ? ” 

“ Just the same. I arranged all that.” 

“ 0, you arranged all that ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ But won’t it be a little awkward for every¬ 
body ? ” 

“ I suppose so,” said Prudence, looking 
wretched as she thought it over. 

Mr. Dent was too wily to say anything more, 
for he saw that if Prudence was urged in her 
present wavering humor to give Dillingham a 
conclusive answer, it might possibly be in the 
negative. 

However, the ice was broken, that was one 
point gained ; the rest would naturally follow ; 
for Prue could not long remain blind to the 
merits of a man like Dillingham, after know¬ 
ing that he loved her. Mr. Dent laughed in 
his sleeve, thinking how sly it was in the 
young parson to corner Prue up there in the 
old fort, and attempt to carry her by storm. 
A vague exultation at Prue’s not allowing her¬ 
self to be taken in this sudden assault, formed, 
in spite of him, an ingredient in the good 
gentleman’s merriment. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


231 


Mr. Dillingham passed the following evening 
at Willowbrook as though nothing unusual had 
occurred between him and Miss Palfrey. If 
the beggar maid, instead of accepting King 
Cophetua on the spot, — as I suppose the minx 
did, — had reserved her decision for a month 
or two to consider the matter, the king could 
not have behaved meanwhile with more tact 
and delicacy than Mr. Dillingham exercised on 
this evening and in his subsequent visits. 

Prudence carefully but not ostensibly avoided 
being left alone with him, and there was none 
of that awkwardness or constraint attending 
the resumption of purely friendly intercourse 
which Mr. Dent had anticipated. 

Observing that the young people no longer 
rode horseback, Mr. Dent hastened the cure 
of his ankle, and the rides were resumed un¬ 
der his supervision ; but the bridle-path lead¬ 
ing to the old earthworks was tacitly ignored 
by all parties. Prudence and Mr. Dillingham 
had gone that road once too often if nothing 
was to come of it. 

Mr. Dillingham retraced his steps so skil¬ 
fully, and had come back with so good grace 


232 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


to the point from which he had diverged, that 
Prudence began to doubt if she had not dreamed 
that tender episode of the old fort, and to 
question if the old fort itself were not a fig¬ 
ment. The whole scene and circumstance had 
become so unreal to her that one morning, 
riding alone, as she sometimes did now, she 
let Jenny turn into the rocky path leading to 
the crest of the hill, and secured ocular proof 
that the ruined earthwork at least was a fact. 
Standing there in the embrasure, she felt for 
an instant as if the young clergyman’s hand 
rested on her own. That same evening Mr. 
Dillingham made it all seem like a delusion 
again by talking to her and smiling upon her 
just as he had done the month previously. 
But the recollection that he had asked her to 
be his wife, and that she had a response to 
make to the momentous question, now and 
then came over Prudence like a chill. 

Rather vexatiously for Mr. Dent, somewhat 
restlessly for his ward, and perhaps not alto¬ 
gether happily for Mr. Dillingham, — however 
composed he seemed, — two weeks went by. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


233 


XY. 


Colonel Peyton Todhunter. 

T the end of those two weeks, Mr. Dilling- 



JL\- ham, who had not spoken to Mr. Dent 
relative to the position of affairs between him¬ 
self and Prudence, took occasion to do so one 
December afternoon, as he was sitting with his 
friend before the open wood-fire in the library. 

There is a quality in an open wood-fire that 
stimulates confidence ; it is easy, in the warm, 
mellow glow, to say what it would be impos¬ 
sible with other accessories to put into unre- 
luctant words ; there is no place like an old- 
fashioned chimney-side in which to make love 
or to betray the secret of your bosom. 

Mr. Dent was in an unusually receptive state 
for the young minister’s confidence. The slow 
process by which Prudence was arriving at a 
knowledge of her own mind did not rhyme 
well with her guardian’s impatience, and was 


234 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


beginning to depress him. He had expected, 
as a matter of course, that his friend Dilling¬ 
ham would seize the first opportunity, and he 
had given him several, to broach the subject; 
but two weeks had elapsed, and the young man 
had not spoken. Mr. Dent drew a distressing 
inference from this silence. Perhaps while Pru¬ 
dence was pondering what to do, Mr. Dilling¬ 
ham was regretting what he had done. Mr. 
Dent ached to give the young minister an en¬ 
couraging word ; but he could not, without a 
sacrifice to his dignity, be the first to touch 
upon the topic. He desired above all things 
that Prudence should wed Dillingham, but he 
was not going to throw her at his head. 

When Mr. Dillingham saw fit, then, this 
December afternoon, to break through his reti¬ 
cence, his friend welcomed the confidence ea¬ 
gerly. The younger man was gratified, but 
presumably not surprised, to find that Mr. 
Dent had his interests very much at heart. 

“ Nothing in the world, Dillingham, would 
make me happier,” Mr. Dent was saying, with 
his hand resting on the young minister’s 
shoulder, when Fanny came into the room and 
gave Mr. Dent a card. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


235 


“‘ Colonel Peyton Todhunter,’ ” Mr. Dent 
read aloud. “ What an extraordinary name! 
Wants to see me? I don’t know any Colonel 
Todhunter. Another subscription to the sol¬ 
diers’ fund, maybe. Show him in, Fanny.” 

“ Perhaps I had better withdraw,” suggested 
Mr. Dillingham. 

“ Not at all; the gentleman will not detain 
me long, and I have a great deal to say to 
you.” 

Mr. Dillingham rose from the chair and 
walked to the farther part of the library, where 
he occupied himself in looking over a portfolio 
of Hogarth prints. Presently Fanny, with a 
rather confused air, ushered in the visitor,— 
a compactly built gentleman somewhat above 
the medium height, with closely cut hair, light 
whiskers and mustache, inclining to red, and a 
semi-military bearing. He wore, in fact, the 
undress uniform of an officer of artillery. 

“ Mr. Dent, — Mr. Ralph Dent ? ” inquired 
this personage. 

“ Yes, sir; I am Mr. Ralph Dent.” 

“ My name is Todhunter, — Colonel Todhun¬ 
ter, of South Carolina.” 


236 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


Mr. Dent bowed somewhat formally, for he 
was an uncompromising Union man, and a 
South Carolinian colonel — a prisoner on parole, 
he supposed — was not a savory article to his 
nostrils. 

44 Of South Carolina ? ” repeated Mr. Dent, 
placing a chair at the colonel’s disposal. 

44 Perhaps I ought to say, sir,” said Colonel 
Todhunter, seating himself stiffly, 44 that I am 
in the United States army. I am one of the 
few West Point officers born in the South who 
have stuck to the old flag. Stuck to the old 
flag, sir.” 

Mr. Dent complimented him on his loyalty, 
and begged, with a slight access of suavity, to 
know how he could be of service to him. 

44 1 come on very unhappy business; business 
of a domestic nature, sir,” said the colonel, 
glowering at Mr. Dillingham as much as to say, 
44 Who in the devil is that exceedingly lady-like 
young gentleman in the white choker ? ” 

44 Whatever your business is,” said Mr. Dent, 
disturbed by this gloomy preamble, 44 do not 
hesitate to speak in the presence of my friend, 
the Rev. Mr. Dillingham. Mr. Dillingham, 
Colonel Todhunter.” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


237 


The two gentlemen bowed distantly. 

“ I am the bearer of bad news for you, sir,” 
said the colonel, turning to Mr. Dent. “ Your 
nephew—” 

u Gad, I knew it was Jack!” muttered Mr. 
Dent. “ My nephew, Colonel Todhunter ? I 
hope he is in no trouble.” 

“ In y ery serious trouble, sir. In fact, sir, 
you must prepare yourself for the worst. In a 
skirmish with the enemy last month, near Rich 
Mountain, he was wounded and taken prisoner, 
and has since died. He was in my regiment, 
sir; the 10th Illinois.” 

Mr. Dent, who had partly risen from his 
chair, sank back into the seat. Though Jack’s 
letter, when it came a fortnight before, had an¬ 
noyed him, he had been glad to know the boy 
was alive and well, gladder than he acknowl¬ 
edged to himself. The intelligence of Jack’s 
death, dropping upon him like a shell from a 
mortar, — for the colonel had acquitted himself 
of his duty with military brevity and precision, 
— nearly prostrated Mr. Dent. 

“ Dear me, Dillingham,” he said huskily, 
“ this is very sad.” 


238 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


He sat for several moments without speak¬ 
ing, and then, recollecting his position as host, 
he begged the young minister to ring for Fanny 
and ask her to bring in some sherry and bis¬ 
cuits for the colonel. 

Mr. Dent took a glass of the wine mechan¬ 
ically, which he held untasted in his hand, 
leaving it to Mr. Dillingham to entertain the 
stranger. 

“Did I understand you to say you were from 
South Carolina ?” asked Mr. Dillingham, break¬ 
ing through the thin ice of his reserve. 

“ From South Carolina, sir,” replied the 
colonel. 

“ That is also my State,” said the young 
clergyman. “ I am distantly connected by mar¬ 
riage with one branch of the Todliunters,— 
the Randalls.” 

“ I come from the Peyton branch, sir. I beg 
a hundred pardons, sir, but I did not quite 
catch your name when our afflicted friend did 
me the honor.” 

“ Dillingham.” 

“Ah, yes, I recollect,” said the colonel, fix¬ 
ing his eye abstractedly on the ceiling, and 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


239 


fingering his glass, “ a Todhunter did marry a 
Dillingham; but it was one of the other branch. 
However, sir, delighted to make your acquaint¬ 
ance ; delighted ” ; and Colonel Todhunter, who 
had not spared the sherry, shook hands effu¬ 
sively with Mr. Dillingham, who immediately 
froze over again. 

The conversation between them still went on, 
with a difference, and the colonel explained 
how he came to be the bearer of the mournful 
news just delivered. Young Dent had joined 
his regiment only a short time before, but he 
had taken a liking to the young man; saw his 
ability with half an eye, sir. Was terribly cut 
up when the report came in that young Dent 
was hurt. Dent had mentioned the fact of his 
uncle living at Rivermouth, and the colonel, 
being at Boston on private affairs, determined 
to bring the information in person. The report 
of Dent’s death in the rebel hospital — or rather 
in an ambulance,, for he died on the way to 
the Hospital, sir — had reached the colonel as 
he was on the point of starting for the North. 

After this the conversation flagged; the colo¬ 
nel made several attempts to leave, but the de- 


240 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


canter of sherry seemed to exert a baleful fas¬ 
cination over him. Finally he departed. 

“ Upon my word, Dillingham,” said Mr. 
Dent, “ this grieves me more than I can tell 
you.” 

“ I can understand your sorrow,” said Mr. 
Dillingham softly. “ I once lost a nephew, and 
though he was only a child, and I was very 
young then, the impression lingered with me 
for years. It was my first knowledge of 
death.” 

“ I have known death before,” said Mr. Dent 
sadly ; “ it is always new and strange.” Then 
after a long pause: “ I would like to have your 
advice on one point, Dillingham. Years ago 
there was a slight love-passage between Prue 
and my nephew, — a boy’s and girl’s love affair, 
which amounted to nothing; but for all that, 
this news will affect Prue seriously — under 
the circumstances. I am certain of it. How 
can I tell her ? ” 

“ Is it necessary to inform her immediately ? ” 
asked Mr. Dillingham, thoughtfully. 

I am afraid it is; there is, you know, a 
question of property involved.” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


241 


“ Of course,” said Mr. Dillingham, “ I would 
naturally advocate any step to shield Miss Pal¬ 
frey from a thing likely to afflict her. So per¬ 
haps my judgment is not worth much; but 
suppose there should be some mistake in this ? 
Colonel Todhunter’s account, according to his 
own showing, is at second hand. It may or 
may not be authentic. Why take the darkest 
view of the case, while there is a chance to 
hope that he has been misinformed or deceived ? 
Either of these things is likely. If I were en¬ 
tirely disinterested, I believe I should advise 
keeping this from Miss Palfrey as long as pos¬ 
sible. In the mean time, with her mind undis¬ 
turbed—” 

“ You are right; you are always right, Dil¬ 
lingham.” 

Mr. Dent grasped eagerly at the slight hope 
held out by the young minister’s words. There 
was Lieutenant Goldstone, Goldstone’s young¬ 
est son, reported killed at Big Bethel, reported 
officially; prayers were offered in church for 
the family, and they had gone into mourning, 
when young Goldstone announced himself at 
head-quarters one day, having escaped through 
11 p 


242 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


the Confederate lines. This and two or three 
similar instances occurred to Mr. Dent, and he 
began to be sanguine that the worst had not 
happened. It would be a remarkable thing, 
indeed, if Jack, after passing three years un¬ 
scathed among the desperadoes of Montana and 
California, should be killed within a week after 
setting foot on civilized ground, even in a 
state of war. Mr. Dent was one of those men 
who have the faculty of deferring the unpleas¬ 
ant, and seem, superficially considered, to be 
lacking in proper sensibility; while in fact it 
is the excess of sensibility that causes them to 
shrink, as long as may be, from facing what is 
disagreeable. 

“ Dillingham,” he exclaimed, looking up 
quickly, “ I hope Colonel Todhunter will not 
spread this rumor in town. It would be dread¬ 
ful for Prue to hear it unprepared. Stories fly 
so! I wish you would hunt up the colonel and 
caution him.” 

“ I will,” returned Mr. Dillingham, “ and I 
will do it without delay. I confess, however, 
that nothing less urgent would induce me to 
continue his acquaintance. I was not favor¬ 
ably impressed by him.” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


243 


“ Nor I. He likes his sherry,” observed Mr. 
Dent, glancing at the empty decanter, and 
smiling. 

“ Much too well,” said Mr. Dillingham 
gravely. 

The young minister lost no time in return¬ 
ing to the hotel, and the first person he met 
was Colonel Todhunter, who had been refresh¬ 
ing himself at the sample-room attached to 
Odiorne’s grocery. The colonel was in so 
boisterous a mood that it was not pleasant to 
confer with him in a public place like the 
doorway of the Old Bell Tavern, and Mr. Dil¬ 
lingham was obliged to invite the gentleman 
into the study. 

During the four days he remained in town, 
Colonel Todhunter left very few sample-rooms 
unexplored. By sheer force of instinct, and 
seemingly without effort on his part, he went 
directly to every place where mixed drinks 
were obtainable. He made the acquaintance 
of everybody, spent his money with a lavish 
hand, and was continually saying, “ Gentlemen, 
will you walk up and cool your coppers ? ” In 
less than twenty-four hours Colonel Peyton 


244 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


Todhunter was a marked character in River- 
mouth, and stood deservedly high in the esti¬ 
mation of those gentlemen — mostly congre¬ 
gated at Odiorlie’s grocery — whose coppers re¬ 
quired periodical cooling. 

Jeremiah Bowditch was seen flitting about 
the streets at this period, in a state of high 
cerebral excitement. He became almost ubiq¬ 
uitous under the colonel’s inspiration, and 
nearly accomplished the difficult feat of taking 
two drinks at the same instant in two differ¬ 
ent sections of the town. Those were halcyon 
days for Mr. Bowditch. 

Mr. Dillingham was grossly scandalized by 
the unseemly conduct of Colonel Todhunter, 
who, on the score of the far-off matrimonial 
alliance between their families, claimed a near 
relationship with the young minister, and in¬ 
sisted on dropping into his rooms at all hours 
of the day and night. “ My cousin James,” 
he would remark, a little pompously, to the 
admiring circle in Odiorne’s store, “ has lost 
something of his hearty Southern manner since 
he came up North ; but he’s a good fellow at 
bottom.” “ Dill, my boy,” he was overheard 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


245 


to say one night, when the young clergyman 
was vainly remonstrating with him on the 
staircase of the hotel, — “ Dill, my boy, you ’re 
a trump, — you are ! ” 

All this was very shocking, and for once the 
gentle face of Mr. Dillingham lost its serenity. 
The anxious, worn expression that came upon 
it showed how keenly he was suffering from 
the colonel’s persecutions. 

The day succeeding Colonel Todhunter’s visit 
to Willowbrook Mr. Dent drove over to town 
to pay his respects to the colonel, if he had 
not already gone, and to interrogate him more 
explicitly as to the sources of his information 
concerning the unhappy tidings he had brought. 
At the interview the day before Mr. Dent had 
been too much distressed to inquire, as he af¬ 
terwards wished to do, into the particulars of 
the case. The colonel was not in. 

“ Perhaps you are fortunate in not finding 
him,” said Mr. Dillingham wearily. “ He is 
drinking, and behaving himself in the most 
reckless manner. I have no doubt Colonel 
Todhunter is a warm-hearted, loyal person,” — 
Mr. Dillingham would not speak unleavened 


246 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


evil of any one, — “ and in the South his free, 
liberal ways would be thought nothing of ; but 
here they seem strange, to say the least, and 
I shall be heartily glad when he clears out. ,, 

“ I hope he has not been indiscreet about 
Jack,” said Mr. Dent, uneasily. 

“ I do not think he has. I cautioned him, 
and he appeared to understand that he was 
not to mention the matter.” 

“ But a man in his cups will talk.” 

“ Still, I believe he has said nothing on the 
subject. I fancy he does not care enough about 
it. I trust to that for his silence rather than 
to his promise. I only wish he would go.” 

Mr. Dent went back to Willowbrook without 
seeing the colonel, who vanished from the town 
at the end of the week. But the fame of Colo¬ 
nel Peyton Todliunter was long kept green in 
Rivermouth, — in the confused brain of Mr. 
Bowditch, and in the annals of Odiorne’s gro¬ 
cery store, where the colonel had neglected to 
pay for numerous miscellaneous drinks. Fanny, 
the chambermaid at Willowbrook, used to allude 
to him as “ that merry gentleman,” his merri¬ 
ment (as Fanny afterwards confessed to Win- 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


247 


gate, the coachman), having expressed itself to 
her in a most astonishing wink just as she 
was ushering him that day into Mr. Dent’s 
library. Against the dull background of New 
England life, the figure of the gay artillery offi¬ 
cer stood out like a dash of scarlet in a twi¬ 
light sky. 

The gallant colonel had dawned on the Riv- 
ermoutliians like the god Quetzalcoatl on the 
Aztecs, like Hiawatha on the Indian tribes of 
North America; and like them, also, he had 
departed mysteriously. A belief in his second 
coming, to inaugurate an era of gratuitous Ja¬ 
maica rum, formed a creed all by itself among 
a select few. Mr. Odiorne was very anxious 
to have him come again; but his was a desire 
rather than a belief. 

The more Mr. Dent reflected on Colonel Tod- 
hunter’s visit, the more sceptical he grew on 
the subject of his nephew’s death. 

“ He’s a rattle-brained, worthless fellow,” 
said Mr. Dent, meaning Colonel Todhunter, 
“ and I don’t believe a word of it. But what 
could possess him to come to me with such a 
story? What possesses people to do all sorts 


248 PRUDENCE PALFREY. 

of mad things ? Maybe it was a drunken freak 
of the colonel’s ; perhaps he intended to bor¬ 
row money of me, and forgot to do so. Very 
likely he borrowed money of Dillingham. I ’ll 
ask him.” 

Colonel Todhunter had borrowed fifty dollars 
of the young clergyman. Mr. Dent enjoyed 
that. 

“ You may smile, my friend,” said Mr. Dil¬ 
lingham, acknowledging the fact, “ but I was 
not so blind a victim as you imagine. I at¬ 
tached a slight condition to the loan, — that he 
should clear out on the instant. If he had 
suspected his strength he could have wrung 
ten times the sum from me. The colonel was 
an infliction, a positive agony, and I think I 
did very well to invest fifty dollars in his de¬ 
parture.” 

“ You may rely upon it, Dillingham, that 
man was an impostor, and his purpose was 
money.” 

“ I begin to fear so,” said Mr. Dillingham. 
“ It is disheartening to see a man of good 
average ability, like the colonel’s, fallen so 
low.” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


249 


Mr. Dent laughed, not at the unworldliness 
of the young clergyman, — that was rather 
touching to Mr. Dent, —but at the picture he 
had in his mind of the consternation and panic 
into which his friend must have been thrown 
by the insolent familiarity of the dashing South¬ 
ern colonel during his sojourn at the Old Bell 
Tavern. The man had necessarily stayed at 
the same house, there being but one hotel in 
the town. 

That Colonel Peyton Todhunter was an ad¬ 
venturer and a rascal was so excellent a key 
to the enigma of his raid on Rivermouth, that 
Mr. Dent in his heart forgave him, and felt 
rather under obligations to him for his moral 
turpitude. If the colonel had been a gentle¬ 
man, Mr. Dent would have been forced to re¬ 
ceive his communication in good faith ; as it 
was, Mr. Dent was not going to give it the 
faintest credence. 

“ Must know Jack, though,” Mr. Dent re¬ 
flected ; “ must have known that Jack was not 
in the habit of writing to me, or the man 
would not have dared to come here with any 
such yarn. If the colonel is a sample of the 


250 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


friends Jack has picked up, I hope he has not 
picked up many.” 

The result of Mr. Dent’s cogitations was that 
Colonel Todliunter’s statement was a fabrica¬ 
tion, at least the tragic part of it; the man 
must have had a general knowledge of Jack’s 
antecedents and of his present surroundings, 
or he would not have been able to invent so 
plausible a story. The colonel was a bounty- 
agent, a camp hanger-on of some kind, and 
had come across Jack in the army. It was 
clear that Jack had carried out the intention, 
expressed in his letter to Twombly, to join 
the service ; the rest was apocryphal. 

Strengthened by Mr. Dillingham’s view of 
the case, Mr. Dent concluded for the present 
to keep from Prudence the nature of Colonel 
Todhunter’s visit, and also decided not to men¬ 
tion the letter which John Dent had written to 
Twombly. If it had not been for Parson Haw¬ 
kins’s will, Mr. Dent would have laid both 
matters before her now without hesitation ; but 
he remembered how Prudence had recoiled at 
the mere suggestion of becoming John Dent’s 
heir, — it was not to be wondered at under 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


251 


the circumstances, — and he lacked the courage 
to inform her of Colonel Todhunter’s ridiculous 
report. 

If Jack had actually been killed in action, it 
was not a difficult thing to obtain an official 
statement of the fact; if there was nothing in 
the story, it would be worse than useless to 
annoy Prue with it. The matrimonial question 
still remained open, and was sufficiently vexa¬ 
tious without other complications. 

Prudence’s capricious delay in making up her 
mind about Mr. Dillingham pressed more heav¬ 
ily each day on Mr. Dent. It was so unfair 
to Dillingham; but what could he, Mr. Dent, 
do ? If he urged her to marry the young man, 
she would probably refuse. If he let matters 
take their own turn, they might be Heaven 
only knew how long in coming to a satisfac¬ 
tory end. In the mean time there was John 
Dent likely to be alive or likely to be dead at 
any moment. 

Mr. Dent’s was an open nature, and to be 
the repository of secrets weighed him down. 
His face was a dial on which the workings of 
the inner man were recorded with inconvenient 


252 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


accuracy. Prudence observed her guardian’s 
perturbed state, and attributed it to her own 
perversity in not loving Mr. Dillingham on the 
spot. 

Though Mr. Dent discredited the colonel’s 
assertions, they troubled him ; but Prudence’s 
procrastination troubled him more. Mr. Dil¬ 
lingham had borne it with noble patience, but 
he was obviously becoming restless under the 
suspense. A man may be a saint, yet, after 
all, there are circumstances under which a saint 
may be forgiven for recollecting that he is a 
man. 

“ I don’t think Prue understands how painful 
this is for Dillingham,” thought Mr. Dent. 
“ She takes it very coolly herself. She was 
twice as much exercised the other day in 
deciding whether she should put a green or a 
purple stripe into an afghan. I never saw such 
a girl! ” 

Of the three persons concerned, Mr. Dent 
was perhaps the most worthy of commiseration, 
though Prudence was far from being as un¬ 
ruffled and happy as she had the grace to 
appear. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


253 


The conference between Mr. Dent and the 
young minister, interrupted by the apparition 
of Colonel Peyton Todhunter that winter after¬ 
noon, was resumed a few days subsequently, 
and was most satisfactory to both parties. 
Prue’s conscientiousness, which amounted al¬ 
most to a flaw in her character, explained her 
hesitation in responding to his young friend’s 
wishes. (That was the way Mr. Dent put it.) 
When she did give him her heart, it would be 
a heart of gold, and would be given royally. 
Mr. Dillingham did not regard this extreme 
delicacy as a flaw in Miss Palfrey; on the 
contrary, it heightened his admiration for her, 
and he would await the event with as much 
patience as he could teach himself. 

“ By the by, Dillingham,’’ said the amiable 
tactician, “ I got a letter this morning from 
the War Department. My nephew is not down 
on the pay-roll of the 10th Illinois. I wrote 
to them relative to Colonel Todhunter. The 
colonel of the 10th Illinois is — what ’s his 
name ? — I declare it has slipped my mind ; 
and there’s no such person in the regiment as 
Todhunter. Practically, I suppose there are 


254 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


plenty of tod-liunters in the regiment, but they 
are not so named.” 

Mr. Dillingham smiled, as one smiles at 
the jokes of one’s meditated father-in-law. 

“ And so the man really was an impostor ? ” 

“ Of course he was. I suspected it the in¬ 
stant I set eyes on him,” said Mr. Dent un- 
blushingly. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


255 


XVI. 

HOW PRUE SANG “ AuLD EOBIN GRAY.” 

W HEN, months before, Mr. Dillingham’s 
intimacy at Willowbrook had given rise 
to those cruel stories which made Prudence 
half wish the young minister would fall in 
love with her, that she might refuse him and 
prove how far she was from dying of blighted 
affections, — at that time it had seemed a sim¬ 
ple thing to Prudence to tell Mr. Dillingham 
that she valued his esteem very highly, that 
she wanted him always for her friend, but that 
she could never love him. One cannot be pos¬ 
itive that she had not, in some idle moment, 
framed loosely in her thought a pretty little 
speech embodying these not entirely novel sen¬ 
timents ; but if this were the case, there was 
a difficulty now which she had not anticipated 
in the pronouncing of that little sentence. 

Did she want to pronounce it ? If such was 


256 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


to be the tenor of her reply to Mr. Dillingham, 
why had she not spoken the words that even¬ 
ing in the fort ? There had been her time and 
chance to sweep all the Rivermouth gossips 
from the board with one wave of her hand, 
and so end the game. To be sure, Mr. Dil¬ 
lingham had confused her by the abruptness 
of his declaration ; but she had recovered her¬ 
self almost instantly, and ought to have been 
frank with him then and there. But she had 
been unable to give him an answer then, and 
now two weeks and more had slipped away, 
leaving her in the same abject state of inde¬ 
cision. Thus far Mr. Dillingham had shown to 
Prudence no sign of impatience; but her guar¬ 
dian was plainly harassed by her temporizing, 
and to Prudence herself the situation had grown 
intolerable. 

She knew what her guardian’s wishes were, 
though he had not expressed them, and his deli¬ 
cacy in not attempting to sway her influenced 
Prue greatly. She knew that her hesitation was 
adding to the disappointment and mortification 
Mr. Dillingham would have to face if she finally 
said No. He could but draw a happy augury 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


257 


from her delay; for if, in grammar, two neg¬ 
atives make an affirmative, in love, too much 
hesitation is equivalent to at least half a Yes. 
She was not certain that her vacillation had 
not made it imperative on her to accept his 
addresses. She stood aghast when she re¬ 
flected that, without speaking a word, she had 
partly promised to be his wife. 

The time when she could think lightly of 
putting aside his proffered love was gone; she 
shrunk now from the idea of giving him pain. 
Since Mr. Dillingham settled in Rivermouth 
her life had been very different, and if he 
passed out of it, as he must if she could not 
love him, the days would be blank again. 
Her esteem and friendship for him had deep¬ 
ened month by month, and during the past 
two weeks his bearing towards her, his defer¬ 
ence, his patience, and his tenderness, had 
filled her with gratitude to him. There were 
moments when she felt impelled to go to him 
and place her hand in his, but some occult in¬ 
fluence withheld her. There were other mo¬ 
ments, for which she blamed herself, when the 
thought of him made her cold, a sense of aver- 


Q 


258 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


sion came over her, — an inexplicable thing. 
Mr. Dillingham was so wise and noble and 
conscientious, there was no one with whom to 
compare him. He had the stable character, 
the brilliant trained intellect, all the sterling 
qualities, in short, that — that John Dent had 
not had. He was not arrogant, or impetuous, 
or light-minded, as John Dent had been : he 
had a singularly gentle and affectionate nature, 
and yet — and the absurdity of the fancy 
caused Prudence to laugh in the midst of her 
distractions — she could not imagine herself 
daring to call Mr. Dillingham “ James.” It 
was twice as easy to say “ Jack ! ” even now. 
In her girlish love for him there had been 
none of these doubts and repulsions and con¬ 
flicts. She had given him her whole heart, 
and had not known any better than to be 
happy about it. Why could she not do that 
now ? 

It was the oddest thing how, whenever she 
set herself to thinking of Mr. Dillingham, she 
thought of John Dent. 

There was no one to whom Prudence could 
appeal for guidance out of the labyrinth into 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


259 


which she had strayed. Mr. Dent could not 
offer her unprejudiced counsel; she had an in¬ 
tuitive perception of the unfitness of her friend 
Veronica to help her, and the old parson was 
in his grave. 

It was positively necessary that she should 
come to some determination soon; but she was 
as far away from it as ever that afternoon 
when these thoughts passed through her mind 
for the hundredth time. 

u Let me think ! let me think ! ” cried Pru¬ 
dence, walking up and down her room with a 
tortoise-shell dressing-comb rather unlieroically 
in one hand. Unlieroically ? I suppose Ophelia 
twined those wild-flowers in her tresses with 
some care before she drowned herself. Medea 
and Clytemnestra would not make so graceful 
an end of it if they did not look a little to 
the folds of their drapery. One must eat, and 
drink, and dress, while life goes on. And if I 
show my poor little New England heroine in 
the act of putting up her back hair, — it being 
nearly six o’clock, and Mr. Dillingham coming 
to tea, — I feel that I am as true to nature 
as if I set her on a pedestal. 


260 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


It was her chief beauty, that brown hair, and 
there were floods of it, with warm sparkles in 
it here and there, like those bits of gold-leaf 
that glimmer in a flask of Eau-de-vie de Dant- 
zic when you shake it. She was arranging 
the hair, after the style of that period, in one 
massive braid over the brows, making a coro¬ 
net which a duchess might have been proud to 
wear. The wonder of this braid was, it cost 
her nothing. 

As Prudence set the last pin in its place, 
she regarded herself attentively for a moment 
in the cheval-glass, and smiled a queer little 
smile, noticing 

“With half-conscious eye. 

She wore the colors he approved,” — 

a cherry ribbon at the throat and waist. 

“ I’m growing to be a fright,” said Pru¬ 
dence, looking so unusually lovely that she 
could well afford to say it, as women always 
can — when they say it. 

There was a richer tint to her cheeks than 
ordinarily, and a deeper glow in her eyes this 
evening, and it did not escape the young min¬ 
ister, who, without seeming to see, saw every¬ 
thing. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


261 


When she came into the library where the 
two gentlemen sat, both were conscious of the 
brightness that surrounded her like an atmos¬ 
phere. “ Dillingham’s fate is to be signed, 
sealed, and delivered to-night,” was Mr. Dent’s 
internal comment; “ there is business in her 
eye.” But poor Prue’s brave looks sadly be¬ 
lied her irresolute, coward heart. She had no 
purpose but to look pretty, and that she ac¬ 
complished without trying. 

It was Mr. Dillingham’s custom to leave 
Willowbrook at ten o’clock, unless there was 
other company ; then he kept later hours. 
There were no visitors on this occasion, and 
the evening appeared endless to Prudence, who 
paused absently in the midst of her sentences 
when the timepiece over the fireplace doled 
out the reluctant half-hours. It seemed to her 
as if ten o’clock had made up its mind not to 
come. Once or twice in the course of the 
evening the conversation flickered and went out 
curiously, as it was not in the habit of doing 
among these friends. 

When the talk turns cold in this sort, it re¬ 
quires great tact to bury the corpse decently. 


262 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


Even with a gifted young divine to conduct 
the services, the ceremony is not always a 
success. 

At half past nine Mr. Dent violated the 
tacit covenant that had existed between him 
and Prudence, by leaving her alone with Mr. 
Dillingham, — for the first time since it had 
become embarrassing to be left alone with him. 
They had been discussing a stanza in Lowell’s 
“ Vision of Sir Launfal,” and Mr. Dent had 
coolly walked off to the library on a pretext 
to look up the correct reading. 

Prudence regarded her guardian’s action as 
a dreadful piece of treachery, and the trans¬ 
parency of it was perhaps plain to Mr. Dil¬ 
lingham, who came to her rescue, for an awk¬ 
ward silence had immediately fallen upon 
Prue, by requesting her to sing a certain air 
from Les Huguenots which she had been prac¬ 
tising. 

Prudence was in no humor for music, but 
she snatched at the proposition with a kind of 
gratitude, and sang the passage charmingly, 
with a malicious enjoyment, meanwhile, in the 
reflection that her recreant guardian, hearing 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


263 


the piano, would know that his purpose was 
frustrated. And in fact, at the first note that 
reached the library, there came over Mr. Dent’s 
face an expression of mingled amusement and 
disgust, in strange contrast with the exquisite 
music that provoked it. He stood with one 
hand lifted to a book-shelf, and listened in a 
waiting attitude; but when the aria was fin¬ 
ished, he made no motion to return to the 
drawing-room. 

Prudence sat with her fingers playing in 
dumb-show on the ivory keys, wondering what 
the next move would be. Mr. Dillingham, who 
had been turning over a portfolio of tattered 
sheet-music, took up a piece which he had se¬ 
lected from the collection, and came with it to 
the piano. 

“ I wish you would sing this, Miss Prudence. 
It is an old favorite of mine, and it is many 
years since I heard it. These homely Scotch 
ballads are not perhaps high art, but they have 
a pathos and an honesty in them which I con¬ 
fess to admiring.” 

As the young minister spoke he spread out 
on the piano-rack some yellowed pages contain- 


264 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


ing the words and music of “ Auld Robin 
Gray.” 

Prudence gave a little start, and a peculiar 
look flitted across her face; then she dropped her 
eyes, and let her hands lie listlessly in her lap. 

“ But perhaps you don’t sing it ? ” said Mr. 
Dillingham, catching her half-dreamy, half- 
pained expression. 

“ 0 yes, I do,” said Prudence, rousing her¬ 
self with an effort, “if I have not forgotten 
the accompaniment.” 

She touched the keys softly, and the old air 
came back to her like a phantom out of the 
past. She played the accompaniment through 
twice, then her voice took up the sweet burden, 
half inaudibly at first, but gathering strength 
and precision as she went on. It was not a 
voice of great compass, but of pure quality and 
without a cold intonation in it. One has heard 
famous cantatrici, all art down to their finger¬ 
nails, who could not sing a simple ballad as 
Prudence sang this, because they lacked the 
one nameless touch of nature that makes the 
whole world kin. “ 4 Young Jamie loo’d me 
weel,’” sang Prue,— 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


265 


€t Young Jamie loo’d me weel, and socht me for his bride ; 

But saving a croun, he had naething else beside : 

To mak that croun a pund, young Jamie gaed to sea; 

And the croun and the pund were baith for me. 

“He hadna been awa a week but only twa, 

When my mother she fell sick, and the cow was stown awa; 
My father brak his arm, and young Jamie at the sea. 

And auld Robin Gray cam’ a-courtin’ me.” 

Mr. Dillingham, who understood music thor¬ 
oughly, as he seemed to understand everything, 
listened to Prudence with a sort of wonder, 
though he had heard her sing many a time be¬ 
fore. The strange tenderness and passion there 
was in her voice brought a flush to his pale 
cheek, as he leaned over the end of the piano, 
with his eyes upon her. 

“My father couldna work, and my mother couldna spin ; 

I toiled day and nicht, but their bread I couldna win ; 

Auld Rob maintained them baith, and wi’ tears in his ee, 
Said, Jenny, for their sakes, O, marry me! 

“ My heart it said nay, for I looked for J amie back; 

But the wind it blew high, and the ship it was a wrack: 

The ship it was a wrack — why didna Jamie dee? 

Or why do I live to say, Wae’s me ? 

“ My father argued sair ; my mother didna speak; 

But she lookit in my face till my heart was like to break : 

So they gied him my hand, though my heart was in the sea J 
And auld Robin Gray was gudeman to me.” 


12 


266 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


It was with unconscious art that Prudence 
was rendering perfectly both the sentiment and 
the melody of the song, for her thought was 
far away from the singing. It was a day in 
midsummer; the wind scarcely stirred the hon¬ 
eysuckles that clambered over the porch of the 
little cottage in Horseshoe Lane; John Dent 
was telling her of his plans and his hopes and 
his love; it was sunshine and shadow, and 
something sad; again he was holding her hand; 
she felt the touch of his lips on her cheek; 
then she heard the gate close, and the robins 
chattering in the garden, and the tears welled 
up to Prue’s eyes, as she sang, just as they 
had done that day when all this had really hap¬ 
pened. And still the song went on: — 

“I hadna been a wife a week but only four, 

When, sitting sae mournfully at the door, 

I saw my Jamie’s wraith, for I couldna think it he, 

Till he said, I’m come back for to marry thee. 

a 0, sair did we greet, and muckle did we say; 

We took but ae kiss, and we tore ourselves away: 

I wish I were dead — ” 

Suddenly something grew thick in Prudence’s 
throat; the dual existence she was leading came 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


267 


to an end, and the music died on her lip. She 
looked up, and met the young clergyman’s 
eyes glowing upon her. 

“I — I can’t sing it, after all,” she said, with 
a wan look. “ I will sing it another time.” 

Then she pushed back the piano-stool ab¬ 
ruptly, hesitated a moment, and glided swiftly 
out of the room. 

Mr. Dillingham followed her with his eyes, 
much mystified, as lie well might have been, at 
Prudence’s inexplicable agitation and brusque¬ 
ness. He leaned against the side of the piano, 
waiting for her to return; but she did not come 
back again to the drawing-room. 

In a few minutes Mr. Dent appeared, and 
could scarcely control his astonishment at find¬ 
ing the young minister alone. 

It was as plain to Mr. Dent as one and one 
make two (though they sometimes refuse to 
be added together) that events had culminated 
during his absence. He had ihtended they 
should; but there was a depressing heaviness 
in the atmosphere for which he was not pre¬ 
pared. He did not dare to ask what had hap¬ 
pened. 


268 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


Mr. Dillingham was ill at ease, and after 
one or two commonplace remarks, he said good 
night mechanically and withdrew. 

“ She has thrown him over, the foolish girl! ” 
muttered Mr. Dent, as he went gloomily up 
stairs with his bedroom candle in his hand, 
“and I am devilishly sorry.” 

For my part, I think the young minister’s 
fortunate star was not in the ascendant that 
night, when he asked Prue to sing “ Auld 
Robin Gray.” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


269 


XVII. 

How Mr. Dillingham looked out of a Window. 

I T was a blustery, frosty morning; the sensi¬ 
tive twigs of trees snapped with the cold; 
the brass knockers on old-fashioned doors here 
and there had a sullen, vindictive look, daring 
you to take hold of them; the sky was slate- 
color. There was no snow on the ground, but 
the wind, sweeping up the street, now and then 
blew the white dust into blinding clouds, which, 
bursting in the air and sifting lazily downward, 
seemed to Mr. Dillingham, as he leaned against 
the casement of a window in the Old Bell Tav¬ 
ern, quite like falling snow. 

The window at which the young minister 
stood was directly over the front door, and com¬ 
manded a prospect of the entire length of the 
street that ran at right angles with the main 
thoroughfare and terminated at the steps of the 
hotel. At the other end of this street was the 


270 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


long bridge — hidden from time to time that 
morning by the swirls of dust — leading to 
Willowbrook. 

Mr. Dillingham had his eyes fixed upon a dis¬ 
tant object approaching from that direction. It 
was a mere speck when he first descried it on 
the bridge, tossed and blown hither and thither 
by the gale; but as it struggled onward he was 
not slow to detect in this atom the person of 
Mr. Dent’s coachman, Wingate. 

Not an especially interesting atom, Wingate, 
as a general thing, to the rest of the human 
family; but he interested Mr. Dillingham very 
deeply this morning. 

As the coachman drew nearer, the young min¬ 
ister saw that he held something white clutched 
in his hand, which the marauding winds, now 
and then swooping down on him from around 
the corners, attempted to wrest from his grasp. 
That it was a note from Miss Palfrey, that it 
was for him, Mr. Dillingham, and that it con¬ 
tained the death-warrant of his hopes, were the 
conclusions at which he arrived before Wingate 
gained the stone-crossing opposite the hotel. 

As Wingate reached this point, and was back- 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


271 


ing up against the wind which just then swept 
furiously around the paint-shop on the corner, a 
hack stopped suddenly on the crossway. A man 
leaned from the window, and called to Wingate, 
who stared at him stupidly for a moment, then 
rushed to the side of the carriage and grasped 
the hand of the occupant; then the two entered 
into an animated dialogue, if one might judge 
by the energetic pantomime that ensued. 

Mr. Dillingham watched this encounter — 
evidently unexpected by both parties — with a 
feverish restlessness not characteristic of him. 
His breath came and went quickly, and his im¬ 
patience seemed to take shape and become crys¬ 
tallized in eccentric zigzag lines on the pane of 
glass nearest his lips. It was rapidly growing 
bitter cold without, and the frost was stretching 
its silvery antennae over all the windows. 

Finally the carriage drove off, and. Wingate, 
as if possessed to prolong the tantalizing sus¬ 
pense of the young clergyman, stood motionless 
on the curbstone several minutes looking after 
the retreating vehicle. Then it appeared to 
occur to Wingate that he was freezing to death, 
and he crossed over briskly to the Old Bell 
Tavern. 


272 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


Mr. Dillingham hurried into the hall and 
snatched the note from the benumbed fingers 
of the astonished coachman, who was accus¬ 
tomed to much suavity and frequent fifty-cent 
pieces from the parson. 

“All right, — Wingate, — thank you!” and 
the door was closed unceremoniously upon the 
messenger. 

Mr. Dillingham broke the seal of the envelope, 
and read the note at a glance, for it was very 
brief. Directly after reading it he tore the paper 
into minute fragments, which he threw into the 
grate. The gesture with which he accompanied 
the action, rather than his face, betrayed strong 
emotion; for his face was composed now, and 
something almost like a smile played about his 
lips. 

He stood for a few seconds irresolute in the 
middle of the apartment; then he went into 
the adjoining room, his sleeping-chamber, and 
took down his overcoat from a shelf in the 
black-walnut wardrobe. 

This was the morning after Prue’s musical 
failure. She had despatched the note to Mr. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


273 


Dillingham as soon as breakfast was over, bu f . 
it had been written long before. She had writ¬ 
ten it in the early gray of the morning, — sitting 
in a ghostly way at her desk, wrapped in a 
white cashmere shawl, with her feet thrust into 
a pair of satin slippers of the Cinderella family, 
while the house slept. It was one of four 
letters. The first was six pages, this was six¬ 
teen lines — a lesson for scribblers. 

While Wingate was on his way to*town with 
the missive, Prudence was in her room sum¬ 
moning up the resolution to tell Mr. Dent what 
she had done. It was not a cheerful task to 
contemplate, remembering how unreasonable and 
angry he had been when she opposed his wishes 
before. She had an unclouded perception of 
the disappointment she was going to give him 
this time. It was pretty clear to her that he 
had set his heart on the marriage. 

Mr. Dent was trying to read the morning 
paper, when the library door opened gently; he 
did not look up at once, supposing it was Bodge, 
the house-boy, bringing in the coals, or Pru¬ 
dence coming to tell him what he dreaded to 
know positively. 

12* 


B 


274 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


When he did look up he saw John Dent 
standing on the threshold and smiling upon 
him apologetically. 

“Good God, Jack! is that you?” cried Mr. 
Dent, letting the paper slip in a heap to his 
knees. 

“ Yes, I — I have come back.” 

Mr. Dent was not a superstitious person, but 
he felt for maybe ten seconds that that was an 
apparition standing over there in the doorway. 
And there was much in John Dent’s aspect 
calculated to strengthen the impression. 

He was worn and pale, as if he had just 
recovered from a long illness, or died of it; his 
cheeks were sunken, his eyes brilliant, and his 
unkempt black hair was blacker than midnight 
against his pallor. A shabby overcoat was 
thrown across one shoulder, concealing the left 
arm which he carried stiffly at his side. There 
was a squalor and a misery about him, height¬ 
ened by his smile, that would have touched the 
compassion of a stranger. Mr. Dent was in a 
depressed mood that morning, and this woful 
figure of his nephew, standing there and smiling 
upon him like a thing out of the churchyard, 
nearly brought the tears to his eyes. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


275 


“Why, Jack, boy, how ill you are! ” 

“ I am only tired,” said John Dent, dropping 
into a chair; “ that and the slight hurt I’ve 
got.” 

“Yes, I heard about that.” 

“You heard about it ? ” 

“ To be sure I did.” 

“ How could you have heard of it ? ” 

“ Colonel Todhunter brought the news. Gad! 
I ’ve done the Colonel something of an injus¬ 
tice.” 

“ Colonel Todhunter ? ” 

“ I did n’t believe a word he said ; but then 
he declared you were dead.” 

“ Colonel Todhunter did ? ” 

« Yes.” 

“I do not want to contradict Colonel Tod¬ 
hunter, for that would n’t be polite,” said John 
Dent, with one of his old smiles, “ but I regret 
to state that I am not dead. Who is Colonel 
Todhunter, any way ? ” 

Mr. Dent stared at him. 

“ What! you don’t know the Colonel ? the 
Colonel knows you very well. He told us all 
about it; the skirmish, you know, in which you 


276 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


were wounded, and taken prisoner, and — ” Here 
Mr. Dent paused, seeing by the vacuous expres¬ 
sion of his nephew’s face that the words were 
meaningless to him. “ Dear me,” he thought, 
“ how very much broken up he is; his memory 
is wholly gone.” 

“ Uncle Ralph,” said John Dent, “ I never 
heard of Colonel Todliunter until this moment; 
I have not been in the army ; I have not been 
in any skirmish; and I have not been taken 
prisoner.” 

This was too calm and categorical a state¬ 
ment not to shake Mr. Dent a little in his 
suspicion that the speaker was laboring under 
some mental derangement. 

“ I have been wounded, to be sure,” continued 
John Dent. “I was shot in Western Virginia, 
in the woods, on my way to join the army,— 
shot by George Nevins,” he added between his 
teeth. “ I imagine he got tired of me at last, 
and concluded to kill me. He failed this time; 
but he will do it, if that is his purpose.” 

In reading John Dent’s letter to Joseph 
Twombly, Mr. Dent had smiled at what he con¬ 
sidered Jack’s hallucination touching the watch 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


277 


which he supposed Nevins was keeping over him 
night and day; but this attempt on Jack’s life, 
if there had really been one, at a spot so re¬ 
mote from the scene of the robbery three years 
before, gave a hue of probability to the idea. 

Mr. Dent looked out of the corner of his 
eye at his nephew. Perhaps Jack was insane. 
Mr. Dent’s faith in the general correctness of 
the Colonel’s statements was coming back to 
him. Sitting with his arms hanging at his side 
and his head resting on his chest broodingly, 
Jack seemed like a person not quite right in 
his mind. 

“ Where is this Colonel Todliunter ? ” he 
exclaimed, starting to his feet. 

“ Good heavens ! don’t he so violent! ” 

“ Where is he, I say ? ” 

“ How can I tell ? The man’s gone.” 

“ How long since ? ” 

“ A fortnight ago.” 

“ Was he here, — in this house ? ” 

“He came here one afternoon, representing 
himself as your friend ; he stayed in the town 
four or five days after that, I believe.” 

“It is three weeks since I was shot,” said 


278 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


John Dent, reflecting. “ Did Twombly see 
him ? ” 

“ I really can’t say whether the deacon saw 
him or not.” 

“ I don’t mean the deacon, I mean Joe.” 

“ Joseph was in Chicago ; been there these 
six months.” 

“ Uncle, what kind of person was this Colonel 
Todhunter? Describe him to me.” 

“ He was something of a character, I should 
say; a cool customer; he made himself very 
much at home — with my sherry.” 

“ Very gentlemanly, and rather pale?” 

“ Well, the sherry was pale,” returned Mr. 
Dent laughing, “ but the Colonel was rather 
florid and not at all gentlemanly ; that is to 
say, he carried it with a high hand in the 
town, though he behaved decently enough when 
he called on me.” 

“ What was he like ? ” 

“ A tall man, taller than you, for instance; 
strongly built, with blue eyes and long sandy 
whiskers.” 

“ George Nevins ! ” 


“ Nonsense ! ” said Mr. Dent. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


279 


u It was George Nevins, I tell you ! ” 

“ Pooh ! you ’re mad. What would bring 
him here, of all the places in the world ? ” 

“ I don’t know; there are many things I 
cannot fathom ; but this I do know, you have 
stood face to face with the most daring and 
accomplished scoundrel that lives. There is n’t 
his match in California or Nevada.” 

“ Good heavens ! ” ejaculated Mr. Dent, un¬ 
easily, with a sensation of 1 laving two or three 
bullet-holes in the small of his back. “ You 
don’t really believe that that man was the fel¬ 
low Nevins ? ” 

“ I do, assuredly. He thought he had dis¬ 
posed of me, and be came here prospecting. It 
was like his impudence. He told you I was dead ? 
Well, he had good reason to suppose so.” 

“ I can’t believe it. Gad, I don’t believe it! 
If it had been he, I think I should have turned 
desperado instinctively, and brought him down 
with the old shot-gun ”; and Mr. Dent was 
making a motion to that nearly harmless 
weapon, which had hung for years unloaded 
over the library mantel-piece, when Prudence 
walked into the room. 


280 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


“ Drop Colonel Todhunter,” whispered Mr. 
Dent hastily. 

In romances and on the stage, the meeting 
between two people who, happily or unhappily, 
have been long separated, is made the occasion 
of much sensational business ; but I have ob¬ 
served that people in real life, who have loved 
or hated each other, are not apt, when they 
meet after a lapse of years, either to swoon or 
scowl or do anything strikingly dramatic. 

Prudence neither started nor fainted when 
she found John Dent with her uncle ; she had 
seen John Dent descend from the hack at the 
gate ten or fifteen minutes previously, — per¬ 
haps it gave her a turn at the instant, — and 
she had now come to welcome him home. 
Nothing could have been more simple or natu¬ 
ral than the meeting between them. If Pru¬ 
dence’s hand was a trifle cold, her hands were 
habitually cold; if John Dent’s hand was hot, 
he had a gunshot-wound, and was feverish. 

u I am glad to see you, Cousin John,” said 
Prudence, simply, as if she had parted with him 
yesterday, and had not eaten three thousand 
two hundred and eighty-five meals since that 
day when he failed to come back to dinner. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


281 


This is shockingly commonplace and realis¬ 
tic, I know, and will cost me a great many 
sentimental readers ; but I must stand or fall 
by the facts. 

Prudence was unaffectedly glad to see John 
Dent; and the sincere friendliness of her greet¬ 
ing placed him at his ease. He had much to 
tell of his wanderings, and much to be told 
of River mouth affairs; and very soon the con¬ 
versation flowed on between these three with 
only the slightest undercurrent of constraint. 
Indeed, it seemed to Prudence like that first 
day, long ago, when John Dent came to River- 
mouth and surprised her by being a frank, 
light-hearted young fellow, instead of the mous¬ 
ing Dryasdust she expected. As in that time 
also, he had come to remain only a brief period; 
there were dragons still at large and giants 
yet unslain. As soon as his arm was well, he 
would bid good by again to River mouth. The 
gold he was going in quest of now was that 
small quantity of bullion which is to be found 
in a lieutenant’s shoulder-straps. 

The parallel between his two visits occurred 
to John Dent himself, as he sat there chatting; 


282 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


and so far as his impecuniosity went, the par¬ 
allel was too close to be agreeable. Before, he 
had had only a slender outfit and a few hun¬ 
dred dollars; and now he was the possessor of 
a navy revolver, and a suit of clothes which 
his uncle eyed thoughtfully from time to time, 
and resolved to have buried in the back-garden 
at no remote period. 

But in spite of this, a blissful serenity, born 
of the home-like atmosphere he was breathing, 
took possession of John Dent. His misfortunes 
were visions and chimeras ; he was as a man 
who, awaking from a nightmare, finds himself 
in a comfortable warm room with the daylight 
pouring through the windows, and strives in 
vain to recollect the dream that a moment ago 
appalled him. 

He looked so shabby, and uncared-for, and 
happy, that Prudence was touched. In speak¬ 
ing of Parson Wibird, she was obliged to ex¬ 
ert all her self-control not to tell John Dent 
of the legacy. Whatever he did, he should not 
go away until he was informed of that. She 
lingered on the subject of the parson’s death, 
and came back to it at intervals, with the 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


283 


hope that her guardian would be tempted to 
break through the now slightly binding condi¬ 
tion of the will. But the old parson recalled 
to Mr. Dent’s mind the new parson, and he 
broke out, with that fine tact which character¬ 
ized him, “ By the way, Jack, you must know 
Dillingham; he ’s a capital fellow.” 

John Dent had learned from Wingate, in 
their hurried conference at the street corner, 
that Prudence was still unmarried ; and for the 
moment he had forgotten everything save the 
delicious fact that he and Prue were sitting 
and talking together as of old. But now his 
countenance fell. 

“ I shall be glad to know him,” he contrived 
to say, with more or less enthusiasm. 

With this, Mr. Dillingham passed out of the 
conversation, and did not drift into it again. 
No other unfortunate word or allusion ruffled 
the tranquillity of that morning, which made 
way with itself so quickly that Fanny caused a 
sensation when she announced dinner. 

The afternoon showed a similar suicidal ten¬ 
dency ; and shortly after tea, John Dent, who 
began to feel the reaction of the excitement 


284 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


he had undergone, went to bed in the same 
room where he had slept three years before. 

Apparently not a piece of the ancient ma¬ 
hogany furniture, which resolved itself, wherever 
it was practicable, into carven claws grasping 
tarnished gilt balls, had been moved since he 
was last there. It struck him, while undress¬ 
ing, that it would be only the proper thing 
for him to go around the chamber and shake 
hands with all the friendly old-fashioned paws, 
— they stretched themselves out from tables 
and chairs and wardrobes with such a faithful, 
brute-like air of welcome. 

The castellated four-post bedstead, with its 
snowy dimity battlements, seemed an incredible 
thing to John Dent as he stood and looked at 
it in the weird winter moonlight. It was many 
a month since he had lain in such a sump¬ 
tuous affair. 

A sensuous calm stole over his limbs when 
he stretched himself on the pliant springs of 
the mattress ; then the impossible blue cana¬ 
ries, pecking at the green roses on the wall¬ 
paper, lulled him to sleep, and would have hopped 
down from the twigs and covered him with 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


285 


leaves, as the robins covered the babes in the 
wood, if he had not been amply protected by 
a great silk patch-quilt, deftly done into varie¬ 
gated squares and triangles by Prue’s own fin¬ 
gers. 

He slept the sleep of the just that night; he 
was a failure, but he slept the sleep of suc¬ 
cess ; and his uncle, in the next room, dropped 
off with the soothing reflection that events had 
proved his wisdom in not telling Prue any¬ 
thing about Colonel Peyton Todhunter; but 
Prudence scarcely slept at all. 

John Dent’s wound was of the slightest, and 
the stiffness had nearly gone out of his shoul¬ 
der when he awoke the next morning. He 
awoke in the same state of beatitude in which 
he had fallen asleep. 

“ I know I don’t amount to much when I’m 
added up,” he said, smiling at himself in the 
glass as if he enjoyed representing a very 
small vulgar fraction in the sum of human 
happiness; “ but I am not going to trouble my¬ 
self about it any more. I’ll go down to Vir¬ 
ginia, and come back presently with one leg 
and a pension, and spend the rest of my days 


286 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


telling stories to Prue’s little ones.” And John 
Dent sighed cheerfully as he pictured himself 
a gray-liaired, dilapidated captain, or maybe 
colonel, with two or three small Dillinghams 
clinging to his coat-skirts. 

It was a singular coincidence that both uncle 
and nephew should have reached that philo¬ 
sophical stage when they could look calmly on 
the prospect of playing grandfather and god¬ 
father respectively to Prue’s children. 

John Dent descended, and found Prudence 
and his uncle in the library, making a pretty 
domestic picture, with the wood-fire blazing 
cheerily on the hearth, lighting up the red 
damask curtains, and the snow outside dash¬ 
ing itself silently in great feathery flakes against 
the windows. It was like an interior by Bough- 
ton, with that glimpse of bleak winter at the 
casements. 

“ Good morning,’* said John Dent, envelop¬ 
ing the pair in one voluminous smile. 

“ Good morning, Jack,” returned Mr. Dent, 
and “ Good morning, Cousin John,” said Pru¬ 
dence, who hurried off to see to breakfast, for 
the Prodigal was to have a plate of those sub- 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


287 


limated waffles of which only Prudence knew 
the secret. The art of their composition was 
guarded at Willowbrook as the monks in the 
Old-World convents guard the distillation of 
their famous cordials. 

The young man saw that he had interrupted 
a conversation between his uncle and Prudence, 
and experienced that uncomfortable glow about 
the ears which comes over one when the dia¬ 
logue stops instantly at one’s appearance. 

However, as Prudence departed to superin¬ 
tend the serving up of the fatted waffle, John 
Dent drew a chair towards the fireplace and 
was about to seat himself, when his eyes fell 
upon a small cabinet photograph which rested 
against a vase at one end of the mantel-piece. 

The back of the chair slipped from John 
Dent’s fingers, and he stood, transfixed for a 
moment, looking at the picture; then he ap¬ 
proached the mantel-shelf and took the photo¬ 
graph in his hand. 

“ Who is this ? ” he asked quickly ; and he 
pointed a quivering finger at the face. 

“ That ? why, that’s my friend Dillingham, 
a cap—” 


288 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


“ Dillingham be -! ” cried John Dent. 

“ That is George Nevins ! ” 

Mr. Dent leaned back in his chair and sup¬ 
pressed himself. 

“ Quiet yourself,” he said, soothingly. “ You 
haven’t slept well, you — ” 

“ Do you suppose I don’t know that face! ” 

“ That is just precisely what I suppose,” cried 
Mr. Dent, giving way to his irritation, “ and I 
could n’t have expressed it better.” 

“ Not know it! Have n’t I thought of it 
every day for two years, fallen asleep thinking 
of it every night, dreamed of it a thousand 
times ? He has cut his mustache and beard,” 
said John Dent slowly and to himself, “and 
wears no collar to his coat. What — what is 
this doing here?” he cried, with sudden fury. 

“Why, Jack, my boy, I tell you that that is 
the Rev. James Dillingham, the pastor of the 
Old Brick Church, Prue’s friend and mine.” 

“You can’t mean it! ” 

“ Don’t be an idiot. If you discover any re¬ 
semblance to Colonel Todhunter in that picture, 
you’ve a fine eye for resemblance.” 

“Todhunter was not the man,” cried John 
Dent. “ This is the man! ” 



PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


289 


It was patent now to Mr. Dent that his 
nephew was a monomaniac on the subject of 
George Nevins. First it had been Colonel Tod- 
hunter, now it was Dillingham, and by and by 
it would be somebody else, Prue or himself 
possibly. Mr. Dent coughed, and restrained the 
impatient words that rose to his lips. The boy’s 
mind was turned by his misfortunes, and yet 
he seemed rational enough on other topics. 

“ You think I am crazy ? ” said the young 
man, reading his uncle’s open countenance as 
if it were a book. “ Well, I am not. I am as 
sane as you are, and as clear in the head as a 
bell. How long has your friend Mr. Dilling¬ 
ham been settled over the Brick Church?” 
And John Dent seated himself, crossing his 
legs comfortably, with the aspect of a man 
who is going to take things philosophically and 
not fret himself about trifles. 

“ Since last-June,” returned Mr. Dent, re¬ 
lieved to see his nephew calm again. “ Dil¬ 
lingham came here in the latter part of May, 
and it is now December. Consequently he has 
been here a little over six months.” 

“ While I was at Shasta,” muttered the 

13 » 


290 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


young man. a But wlio fired on me in Vir¬ 
ginia, if it was n’t Nevins ? ” Then in a neg¬ 
ligent way to his uncle, “ Where does your 
friend Dillingham live?” 

“In Rivermouth, of course.” 

“ Where ? ” 

“ At the Old Bell Tavern.” 

John Dent went out of the room like a flash. 

After an instant of panic, Mr. Dent dashed 
after him. The hall door was locked and 
bolted; there was a complicated bolt with a 
chain, and the young man was tugging at the 
chain when his uncle seized him by the arm. 

“ What are you trying to do ? ” 

“ I must see this man Dillingham, Uncle 
Ralph.” 

“ Certainly, so you shall see Dillingham. 
Ten to one he will ride out here before the 
morning is over, in spite of the storm; and 
then you will discover how absurd you are.” 

“ Granting I am wrong,” said John Dent as 
composedly as he could, “ I cannot wait to have 
proof of it. If he is the man I think he is, he 
knows where I am by this time, and will not 
show his face here. I must go to him.” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


291 


“ Before breakfast ? ” 

“ This instant!” 

Mr. Dent reflected that perhaps the only cure 
for his nephew’s delusion was to bring him face 
to face with the young minister, whom, by the 
way, Mr. Dent himself was anxious to see; he 
was still ignorant of what had passed in the 
drawing-room two nights previously, for Pru¬ 
dence had found no fitting moment since John 
Dent’s arrival to inform her guardian of her 
decision and the letter she had written to Mr. 
Dillingham. 

So one of the carriage horses was ordered to 
be harnessed to the buggy and driven around to 
the side door. Meanwhile John Dent paced the 
hall chafing; and Prudence, with her eyebrows 
raised into interrogation-points, stood behind 
the coffee-urn in the breakfast-room, wondering 
what it all meant. 

When the buggy was ready, Mr. Dent pro¬ 
posed to go to town alone and bring the young 
minister back with him; but John Dent would 
not listen to the suggestion, and the two drove 
off together in the storm. 

The snow beat so persistently in their faces 


292 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


all the way, that there was no chance for con¬ 
versation, if either had been disposed to talk. 
Mr. Dent stole a glance now and then at the 
young man, whose eyes glowed wickedly over 
a huge white mustache which he had got riding 
in the teeth of the wind. “ I ’ve half a mind 
to tip the pair of us over the next bank,” mut¬ 
tered Mr. Dent; “ he’s as crazy as a loon ! ” 

On driving up to the door of the Old Bell 
Tavern, Mr. Dent begged his nephew to control 
himself and do nothing rash. John Dent prom¬ 
ised this, but with set teeth and in a manner 
not reassuring. 

“You are making a dreadful mistake; and 
if you involve me in any absurdity I ’ll never 
forgive you. Dillingham is my friend., and one 
of the noblest fellows in the world. It is rather 
early for a call, I ’ll go up first, Jack.” 

“ And I ’ll go with you,” said John Dent 
with disgusting promptness. 

Mr. Dillingham’s suite of rooms was on the 
second floor, and the door of his parlor or study 
gave upon the main staircase. Mr. Dent, in¬ 
wardly consigning his nephew to the shades 
below, knocked two or three times without 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


293 


awakening tlie well-known voice which always 
said “ come in ” to his recognized knock; then 
he turned the handle of the door which was 
not fastened. 

“ He’s in bed at this hour, of course,” he 
remarked. The town clock was striking eight. 
“ We ’ll step into his parlor and wait for him.” 

The room was in the greatest disorder; the 
drawers of a large escritoire between the win¬ 
dows were standing wide open, the grate was 
full of dead ashes, and over the carpet every¬ 
where were scattered half-torn letters and 
papers. John Dent cast one glance around the 
apartment, and then rushed into the small bed¬ 
chamber adjoining. The bed was unrumpled. 

“ Gone! ” moaned John Dent, dropping into 
a chair. 

“ Gone ? nonsense. Gone to breakfast,” said 
Mr. Dent. 

“ It’s no use,” said the young man, settling 
himself gloomily in the chair; “ he is hun¬ 
dreds of miles away by this time. While we 
were sitting in the chimney-corner over yonder, 
fire and steam and all infernal powers were 
whisking him off beyond my reach.” 


294 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


Mr. Dent pulled at the bell-cord as if he had 
suddenly had a bite, and jerked in Larkin the 
waiter. Where was Mr. Dillingham? Larkin 
did not know where Mr. Dillingham was. He 
would inquire at the office. 

He returned shortly with the information 
that Mr. Dillingham had gone out quite early 
the day before, and had not been in since. 
The young minister was in the habit of ab¬ 
senting himself for several days together with¬ 
out notifying the office-clerk, who supposed in 
this instance, as in the others, that Mr. Dil¬ 
lingham was visiting his friend Mr. Dent at 
Willowbrook. 

“ That ’ll do, Larkin,” said Mr. Dent. “ Noth¬ 
ing particular. We ’ll look in again.” 

Exit Larkin, lined with profanity. 

Mr. Dent, with a feeble smile on his lips, 
stood looking at his nephew. 

“ It is too late,” said the young man, “ but 
I would like to send a telegram to Boston and 
one to New York.” 

“ To whom ? ” 

u To the chief of police.” 

Mr. Dent started. “ Don’t you do it! I 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


295 


know you are wrong, though I acknowledge 
that the thing has a strange look. You would 
feel rather flat if, after you had sent off a 
couple of libellous messages, Dillingham should 
turn up and explain it all in a dozen words, 
as I am positive he will. I could never look 
him in the face again.” 

“ You won’t, any way,” said John Dent. 
“ However, I don’t want to use the name of 
Dillingham in the matter. I shall simply give 
a description of the person of George Nevins. 
That will not inconvenience any one, I ’m afraid. 
See how he slips through my fingers! I should 
call the man an eel, if he was n’t a devil.” 

Mr. Dent made no further objection; the 
two descended to the street and drove to the 
telegraph-office. 

In the midst of writing a despatch, young 
Dent paused and nibbled the top of the pen¬ 
holder. “ I wonder I did n’t think of that be¬ 
fore,” lie said to himself ; and then in a low 
voice to his uncle, “ Ask the operator if Dil¬ 
lingham has sent or received anything over the 
wires lately.” 

Mr. Dillingham had sent two telegrams the 
day before. 


296 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


“ Will you allow me to look at them a mo¬ 
ment ? ” 

Knowing Mr. Dent to be the intimate friend 
of the young pastor, the clerk obligingly took 
the copies of the two despatches from a clip on 
his desk and handed them to the elderly gen¬ 
tleman. 

Dropping the date, the telegrams read as 
follows : — 

I. 

To Rawlings & Son, Bankers, 

Chicago, Illinois : 

Place the balance due me on account, and the six 
U. S. bonds you hold for me, to the credit and sub¬ 
ject to the order of Colonel Peyton Todhunter. 

James Dillingham. 

II. 

To Colonel Peyton Todhunter, 

Milwaukee, Wisconsin : 

Go to Chicago instantly. Draw funds from Raw¬ 
lings. Will join you at 6666. You have failed. 
He is here. j) 

“ Are you convinced now ? ” whispered John 
Dent, having with breathless interest read these 
documents over his uncle’s shoulder. “ It ap- 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


297 


pears, though I don’t understand the last tele¬ 
gram at all, that your friend Colonel Peyton 
Todhunter is the friend of your worthy friend 
the Rev. James Dillingham; and a precious 
pair they are, if I may say so without hurting 
your feelings. 4 He is here ’ means me of 
course; but what is meant by ‘You have 
failed ’ ? ‘ 6666 ’ evidently designates some 

point of rendezvous.” 

“ Jack,” whispered Mr. Dent thickly, “ I 
can’t* believe my eyes ! ” 

“ I would n’t,” said Jack. “ I’d stand it 
out. In the mean time I will send off this de¬ 
scription, and then we ’ll go back to the hotel. 
He decamped in haste, and may have left be¬ 
hind him something in the way of letters or 
papers that will be useful to me.” 

The young man seated himself at a desk, 
and, after a moment’s reflection, wrote the 
following message, which he handed to his 
uncle : — 

Messhs. Rawlings & Son, 

Chicago, III. : 

Has Colonel Todhunter drawn the funds described 
in the despatch of yesterday? If not, stop payment 
until further advices. J. D. 


298 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


“ That’s a clever idea,” said Mr. Dent, 
awaking from the stupor that had fallen upon 
him. “ We will have an injunction on them, 
if it is not too late; but is n’t it a sort of 
forgery to use Dillingham’s name this way ? ” 

“ I have n’t used his name,” answered Jack, 
laughing; “ I have put my own initials to the 
document, like a man. Are you working 
through ? ” he asked, turning to the clerk. 
“ Then send this along.” 

He resumed his seat at the desk, and fell 
to work on a personal description of George Nev- 
ins. This was a task of some difficulty, requir¬ 
ing a conciseness and clearness of diction which 
cost him considerable trouble. More than half 
an hour elapsed before John Dent had com¬ 
pleted the portrait to his satisfaction. He was 
in the midst of his second despatch, when the 
operator received from Rawlings & Son a tele¬ 
gram that seemed to puzzle him somewhat. 

“ This appears to be an answer to your 
despatch, sir, but it is addressed to Mr. Dilling¬ 
ham.” 

“ A mistake at the other end,” said Mr. Dent, 
quickly. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


299 


“ What do tliey say ? ” asked John Dent, 
reaching forward to take the long narrow strip 
of paper from the clerk’s hand. 

Colonel Todhunter had drawn out the funds 
in full. The Messrs. Rawlings & Son trusted 
there was nothing wrong in the matter; they 
had acted strictly according to instructions. 

“Just as I expected,” said Jack, tossing the 
paper to his uncle, “ luck is dead against me.” 
Then he went on with his writing: “ Five feet 
eight or nine inches; blue eyes; light hair, 
probably cut close; no beard or mustache,” 
etc., etc. 

“ This is simply horrible,” murmured Mr. 
Dent; and as he walked nervously up and 
down the office, he recalled the afternoon when 
he introduced Dillingham to Colonel Todhunter, 
and how they had saluted each other as stran¬ 
gers, and seemed to dislike each other, being 
such different men ; then he reflected that it 
was chiefly through his own means that this 
scandal had been brought upon Rivermouth; 
then he thought of Prue, and he turned cold 
and hot, and pale and flushed, by turns ; and 
the rapid scratching of John Dent’s pen over 


300 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


the paper, and the monotonous clicking of the 
satanic little telegraph instrument behind the 
wire screen, drove him nearly distracted. 

“ And now, if you please, we will inspect 
the sanctum sanctorum of the late incumbent,” 
said John Dent gayly. 

It was only human that he should relish the 
consternation of his uncle. But as they were 
passing out into the street, John Dent’s face 
underwent a change ; he halted on the last of 
the three steps leading to the sidewalk, and, 
grasping the iron railing, seemed unable to 
move further. 

“ What is it now ? ” asked Mr. Dent, ner¬ 
vously. 

“ Uncle Ralph, was Prue engaged to that 
man ? — did she love him ? ” 

“ No ! ” cried Mr. Dent; “ I believe she 
hated him instinctively, — thank God ! ” 

“ Amen! ” said John Dent, drawing a long 
breath. “ He has got my money, he has blighted 
two years of my life, but if he lias n’t got at the 
pure gold of Prue’s heart, I forgive him! ” 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


301 


XVIII. 

A Rivermouth Mystery. 

T HE two Dents returned in silence to the Old 
Bell Tavern, and went up directly to the 
deserted study. 

“ First of all,” said John Dent, closing the 
door and turning the key, “ I want to know 
how he came here, how he managed to step 
into Parson Hawkins’s shoes, and all the details. 
Tell me slowly, for I feel I shall not compre¬ 
hend this thing, unless it is put in the simplest 
way.” 

The story of Mr. Dent’s acquaintance with 
Dillingham in New York, and the chain of com¬ 
monplace events that had ended in his coming 
to Rivermouth as the pastor of the Old Brick 
Church, was told in a few words. It was not 
a strange story, taking it link by link; it was 
only as a whole that it appeared incredible. 

“ He was an artist, that man,” said Mr. Dent, 


302 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


with an involuntary pang of admiration, as he 
recalled the cleverness with which Dillingham 
had put Joseph Twombly out of the way. He 
recollected now that Dillingham had withheld his 
consent to come to Rivermouth until the very 
day Twombly started for Chicago. “ Ah, Jack, 
if good people, as a class, were one half as in¬ 
telligent and energetic as rogues, what a world 
this would be ! ” 

“Knowing Nevins as I do,” said John Dent 
when his uncle had finished, “ his adroitness 
and cunning, I can understand what a tempting 
thing it was to him to play at this masquerade; 
but he must have had a deeper motive than a 
mere whim to keep him here seven months.” 

“ He fell in love with Prue, of course,” said 
Mr. Dent, with a twinge ; “ and then— I see 
it all, Jack! you were right. He did have a 
watch set on you ; he meant to marry Prue, 
and keep you out of the parson’s money, even 
if he had to kill you to do it!—it was Tod- 
hunter who made the attempt on your life when 
they saw you were coming East; it was Tod- 
hunter who dogged your steps all the time! ” 

“ The parson’s money ? ” said John Dent. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


303 


The words had escaped Mr. Dent in his ex¬ 
citement, as the whole of the desperate game 
which Dillingham had probably been playing 
flashed upon him. It will be remembered that 
on the morning when Parson Hawkins’s later 
will was found, Mr. Dent went to Boston to 
meet Mr. Dillingham and conduct him to River- 
mouth. Mr. Dent was full of the matter, and 
that night, at the Revere House, he had spoken 
freely to his friend of the old parson’s whimsical 
testament. Perhaps it was in that same hour 
Dillingham formed the purpose to possess him¬ 
self of the money, — admitting, for the moment, 
that Dillingham was George Nevins. 

John Dent stood looking inquiringly at his 
uncle. It was too late to recall the words; the 
circumstances seemed to warrant Mr. Dent now 
in disregarding the restriction of the will, and 
he told his nephew of the legacy. 

At another moment, this undreamed-of fortune 
would have filled John Dent’s heart with both 
joy and sadness; but the day, scarcely begun, 
had been too crowded with other emotions, for 
him to give way to either now. He walked to 
the window and, rubbing a clear space on one 


304 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


of the panes, looked out into the snowy street 
for several minutes ; then he turned to Mr. Dent 
and said quietly, “ Let us look through these 
things.” 

A closer examination of the study and sleep¬ 
ing-room afforded indubitable evidence that the 
late occupant had abandoned them in desperate 
haste, but also that he had left behind him no 
letters or written memoranda giving any clew to 
his intended movements. A quantity of papers 
had been burnt in the grate; an undecipherable 
fragment of the note Prudence had written him 
lay on the hearth-rug, and near it the back of 
a delicate pink envelope with which no one 
would have thought of associating the fair Ve¬ 
ronica, if it had not borne her pretty mono¬ 
gram. 

Mr. Dillingham had, so to speak, spiked his 
guns; but a company of embroidered worsted 
slippers, — as gay as a company of Zouaves,— 
and a number of highly mounted dressing-gowns 
sufficient properly to officer this metaphorical 
detachment, fell into the hands of the enemy. 

The younger man, on his side, conducted the 
investigation with relentless"scrutiny; but Mr. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


305 


Dent only cursorily, for the place in liis heart 
which Dillingham had occupied was yet warm 
with the late presence. 

Two discoveries were made, unimportant in 
themselves, but one of which interested the 
nephew, and the other startled the uncle, who,j 
in the progress of the search, appeared to be 
receiving a series of shocks from an invisible 
galvanic battery. 

“ Here’s a photograph which was lost some 
time since with a certain pocket-book contain¬ 
ing a small sum of money and John Dent 
held out at arm’s length a faded vignette head 
of Prudence, gazing at it thoughtfully. “ The 
finder would have been liberally rewarded if I 
had got hold of him. Hullo! what’s this ? 
Somebody’s bracelet,” he added, fishing up a 
piece of jewelry from the depths of the travel¬ 
ling-trunk over which he was stooping. 

u Dear, dear! ” groaned Mr. Dent. It was 
Veronica Blydenburgli’s bracelet. He knew of 
its loss ; everybody knew of it. You could no 
more lose a bracelet in Rivermoutli without 
everybody knowing it than you could lose your 
head. 


306 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


This affair seemed blacker to Mr. Dent than 
all the rest, — blacker than the attempt on 
Jack’s life, inasmuch as petty larceny lacks the 
dignity of assassination. But I fancy Mr. Dent 
was a trifle uncharitable here. As a reminis¬ 
cence of a lovely white wrist, the trinket may 
have had a value to Mr. Dillingham which Mr. 
Dent did not suspect. 

“ What a finished rogue he was! It is only 
when a man adds hypocrisy to his rascality, 
that he becomes a perfect knave.” 

“ Yes,” said John Dent, 44 that little lamb’s- 
skin does aggravate the offence.” 

Mr. Dent walked off to the other end of the 
room and began turning over a lot of books 
and pamphlets piled in one corner. 

“Look here, Jack!” he cried presently, 
44 here is where he got his sermons from, — 
4 South’s Sermons,’ 4 Robertson’s Sermons,’ 
4 Hooker’s Sermons,’ 4 Cumming’s Great Tribu¬ 
lation,’ 4 Peabody’s Discourses.’ Gad ! he mixed 
them up, old and young. By heaven! here’s 
the very passage Prue thought so affecting 
Fast Day. See where he’s changed 4 London ’ 
into Rivermouth , and 4 our Gracious Queen ’ 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


307 


into our honored Chief Executive. Jack,” said 
Mr. Dent, solemnly, “ let us go home ! ” 

“ Uncle Ralph, that is almost the only ra¬ 
tional suggestion you have made to-day. I am 
famished.” 

“ And I am frozen,” said Mr. Dent with a 
shiver, picking up his overcoat. He drew on 
one sleeve, and paused. 

“Well?” said his nephew. 

“ Jack, this thing must be hushed up, for 
Prue’s sake. The deacons will have to know 
the truth, and maybe one or two outsiders; 
but the towns-people must never be allowed to 
suspect the real character of that man. Some 
plausible explanation of his flight must be cir¬ 
culated. If he has left any bills,” continued 
Mr. Dent, with an unconscious grimace, “ I 
shall pay them. I cannot eat a mouthful until 
this is settled. I must see Blydenburgh and 
Twombly and Wendell without wasting a mo¬ 
ment, and I want you to come with me.” 

“ For Prue’s sake, and for your sake,” said 
John Dent, laughing. 

“ Yes, for my sake too. Don’t be hard on 
a fallen brother. You can’t afford to, Jack. 


308 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


If Dillingham deceived me, George Nevins was 
too many for you.” 

“ That’s a fact,” said John Dent. 

In the course of an hour the deacons and 
trustees of the Old Brick Church assembled to¬ 
gether mysteriously in Deacon Twombly’s par¬ 
lor,— five or six honest, elderly, bald-headed 
gentlemen, who now had the air of dark-browed 
conspirators on the eve of touching off innu¬ 
merable barrels of gunpowder. Deacon Zeb 
Twombly might have been taken for Guy 
Fawkes himself. 

The next day it was known that the Rev. 
Mr. Dillingham had quitted Rivermouth; it was 
understood in the parish and in the town that 
family matters, involving the jeopardy of large 
estates, had called Mr. Dillingham away so sud¬ 
denly that he had had time to advise only his 
immediate friends of his departure. It was 
also understood that his return was proble¬ 
matical. There were dark hints and whispers 
and rumors and speculations, to be sure; but 
for once a secret was kept in Rivermouth,— 
though one woman knew it ! 

Prudence had to be told, of course, and she 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


309 


nearly died with desire one afternoon, six 
months afterwards, to tell Veronica Blyden- 
burgli everything, — the afternoon Veronica 
came to her and said, 

“ Only think, Prue, papa found my opal 
bracelet under the flooring of the old summer¬ 
house.” 

Veronica sat silent for a moment, dreamily 
weaving the bright coil in and out her slender 
fingers; then suddenly lifting her head, she 
cried, 

“ Prue, will you swear never to breathe 
it to a living soul if I tell you some¬ 
thing ? ” 

“Yes,” said Prudence, with a start. 

“Well, then, the afternoon before he went 
away so strangely — ” 

“ Who went away ? ” 

“ Mr. Dillingham.” 

“ Oh ! ” 

“The afternoon before he went away, he — 
he offered himself to me.” 

“ What! ” cried Prudence, turning white and 
red. It was beginning to appear that Cupid 
had had two strings to his bow. 


310 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


“ I say,” repeated Veronica, “that Mr. Dil¬ 
lingham offered himself to me.” 

“ And you refused him ! ” 

“0 Prue! that’s the bitterness of it! — I 
accepted him! ” 

I have not said — though I have let John 
Dent say it — that the Rev. James Dillingham 
was George Nevins. Is it improbable ? As I 
come to the close of my story, I have a feel¬ 
ing that the career of James Dillingham in 
Rivermouth, supposing him to be identical with 
George Nevins, will strike the reader as improb¬ 
able, and it is improbable — as the things that 
happen every day. But such as it is, the chron¬ 
icle ends here. 

And Prudence Palfrey? 

The reader shall become my collaborator at 
this point and finish the romance to his own 
liking. It is only fair for me to inform him, 
however, that one morning last spring as I 
was passing, portmanteau in hand, from the 
station at Rivermouth to the old gambrel-roofed 
house in a neighboring street where I always 
find welcome, I saw a little man swinging on 
a gate. 


PRUDENCE PALFREY. 


311 


I had never seen this small personage before, 
but there was something absurdly familiar in 
the dark hair and alert black eyes, something 
absurdly familiar in the lithe, wiry figure (it 
was as if John Dent had been cut down from 
five feet eight to three feet four) ; and when 
he returned my salutation with that cavalier 
air which stamps your six-year-old man of the 
world, there was an intonation in his voice so 
curiously like Prue’s, that I laughed all to 
myself! 

















































































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